Facelift

Dr. Richard Hamilton performs facelift surgery at his Adelaide practice.

Dr. Hamilton: “The facelift involves rejuvenation of the face and neck. And what I do is called a short scar facelift. It’s a real facelift, but through a shorter incision that runs up in the crease in front of the ear and runs along the temporal hairline, so it’s consumed by hair growth. And the beauty of this operation is firstly, patients don’t lose any hair like they used to do in the old-fashioned facelift. People think a face lift is just tightening of the skin, but it’s not. When patients age, everything descends. It’s the skin, it’s the muscles, it’s the fatty tissues. So what I need to do is insert a series of suspension sutures to reposition those structures that have sagged: the cheek, the jowl, the neck. Then I can trim the surplus skin in the temple area. Now that procedure gives a very, very natural lift. Gone are the days of the unnatural windswept look. When patients come back and see me after their procedure, they say friends and family comment on how well they look, and ask, ‘Have you been on holiday?’ They don’t know they’ve had a facelift procedure. That’s the beauty of this short scar facelift procedure. It’s a great operation, it’s relatively minimal intervention, and recovery is very quick. Patients can be back at work at three weeks. And that’s fantastic, really.”