Cheek-Lifts Get a Lift

Jan. 30 -- It's been called one of the hottest topics in plastic surgery — and it doesn't involve the breast or the buttocks.

Cheek-lifts are "it," say some plastic surgeons. And though they're not for everyone, they are helping some people look younger at a much lower price than a traditional face-lift.

Surgeons say the procedure can help patients achieve that "fresh look" they lose as they age. They can serve as a fix for droopy fatty tissue in the middle of the face that often causes puffy jowls.

The cheek-lift combats this problem by lifting the droopy cheek tissue, repositioning it back over the cheekbone, and thus restoring the youthful contour of the cheeks, a far cry from the tight, windblown look of some face-lift patients.

"It is a very hot area," says Dr. Darrick Antell, a New York-based plastic surgeon.

But Antell says facial rejuvenation is more complicated than "simply pulling the skin back. You need to actually reposition and lift some of the deeper tissues as well."

Less Pain, More Gain

And in recent years, cheek-lifts have become more and more "user-friendly." While the traditional approach to a cheek-lift involved making an large incision under the eye, cutting down to the cheekbone, and laboriously scraping face tissue off the bone, surgeons have significantly modernized the technique.

Dr. Brent R.W. Moelleken, a plastic surgeon in Beverly Hills, Calif., has developed the "superficial" cheek-lift, in which the surgeon makes a small incision under the lower eyelashes, strengthens the facial muscles, and pulls the cheek pad up and anchors it to tissue at the temple. Using this procedure, the surgeon achieves a vertical lift of the mid-face and rejuvenates the area under the eyes with much less risk to the lower eyelids.

Dr. Gregory Keller, a plastic surgeon in Santa Barbara, Calif., and clinical assistant professor at UCLA, takes a slightly different approach with a procedure he says goes beyond the cheek-lift.

Keller's procedure, called a "percutaneous mid-face-lift," lifts the whole area in the center of the face upward and outward, rather than lifting just the cheek pad. To perform the lift, Keller makes two tiny puncture holes just below the sagging cheek, then uses surgical thread to draw up the cheek and re-anchors it at the temple.