I recently had opportunity to be videotaped in a class and unlike other times I’ve been filmed, the class I enrolled in meant playback after playback of this particular tape. The thing that struck me was my neck and how much it’s thickened and wrinkled in the last few years. I’ve also noticed that I have a section of skin on my neck that’s paler than the lower neck, almost as if all that time I spent in the sun and in sunbeds years ago has caught up with me…it appears I must have had my neck tucked down while tanning! Rather than wear turtleneck shirts for the rest of my life to hide my aging neck, I’d like to know what I can do. I find myself craning my neck or elongating to hide the wrinkling, and that’s really doing nothing but making me look like a hamster. Help!

Dr. Jeffrey R. Raval, triple-board certified plastic surgeon who specializes in head and neck surgery, recommends that people who aren’t yet ready for a full-blown neck lift, which involves general anesthesia and several weeks of downtime, consider first the Sciton laser pulsed light photofacial treatment in companion with the Sciton SkinTyte treatment, a series of three to five laser treatments, depending on the severity of the laxity of one’s neck skin. SkinTyte is non-invasive and takes less than an hour per treatment using only a topical anesthesia to eliminate any discomfort while the SkinTyte laser is passed over the neck area in several repetitions.

An additional treatment of BOTOX injections can be recommended to smooth out the rings or lines that sometimes develop around the neck.

Dr. Raval does perform necklift surgery under general anesthesia, usually as part of a facelift but sometimes this procedure can be performed alone. The repair of the platysma muscles helps redefine the neck. The surgery of the neck is reached through incisions around the ears and through tiny incisions under the chin. When there is a good deal of extra skin, it needs to be removed as part of the lift. This placement of the incisions permits hiding the scars behind the ears. There is some degree of swelling and possibly bruising in most patients but usually very little in the way of pain or discomfort. Swelling is mostly resolved in two to three weeks, but some swelling will persist. Most patients are quite presentable within one to two weeks.

To make an appointment for a consultation with Dr. Jeffrey R. Raval, call 303.744.2300.

My mid-50s girlfriends got together last week for dinner—something we’ve been doing for nearly 30 years every couple of months. It had been half a year since I’d been able to join them and while this is a group of women that’s healthily interested in keeping up their looks, I could see a lot of difference—more wrinkles, deeper frown lines, dull complexions. It caused me to take a good hard look at myself in the mirror the next morning and while there’s plenty more I could elect to do for myself, I’m thoroughly pleased that four years ago I underwent a blepharoplasty in Dr. Raval’s care.

As Dr. Raval pointed out to me then, the eyes are the first place on the face to give up our age as a rule. My eyes had begun to have thicker lids, and when I smiled for family photographs, my eyes then looked more like narrow slits than the eyes I had as a much younger woman.

Besides the blepharoplasty for upper eyelid surgery, Dr. Raval performed an under-eye surgery to re-build the wall of fat under my eye that had in the course of aging drooped, allowing my lower eyelids to show slight bags on most mornings. Five years later, my eyes are the youngest looking part about me when I get up in the morning. I don’t have any of the “cat-eye” look that some of my acquaintances seem to have after their eye surgeries either, and I’m so glad for Dr. Raval’s skill as a surgeon. He explained to me prior to my lower eyelid surgery that the cat-eye look is a matter of technique versus more than anything else. One of my friends had surgery performed by an eye doctor who advised her to forego the under-eyelid surgery because the cat-eye look would be the result. She now says she’s disappointed that she didn’t go ahead with the under-eyelid surgery by Dr. Raval instead.

It’s amazing to me after five years time that the eyes-wide-open look that blepharoplasty can afford me is still as becoming as it was a month after surgery.

This is a procedure I would never regret and will recommend to anyone who asks!
–Mid-50s and seeing clearly.

To make a consultation appointment with Dr. Jeffrey R. Raval, triple-board certified facial plastic surgeon, call 303-744-2300. Dr. Raval has practices in Denver and Lone Tree, Colorado.