Models of facial aging and implications for treatment.

In this article, which focuses on concepts rather than techniques, the author emphasizes that the best predictor of a good facelift outcome is an already attractive face that has good enough tissue quality to maintain a result past the swelling stage. The author notes that too often, surgeons gravitate toward a particular facial support technique and use it all the time, to often unsatisfactory results. He singles out different areas (the brows, the tear trough, the cheeks, and so forth) and shows how the addition of volume may give results better than traditional methods. As he points out, a less limited and ritualistic approach to the face seems to be how cosmetic surgery is evolving; all factors that might make a face better are reasonable to entertain.