Thank you for your question! You’re 46-years-old and you’re asking if you should complete
your course of Invisalign® before having a facelift. Well certainly that’s a very
good question and I can certainly give you my perspective.
I’m a board certified cosmetic surgeon and fellowship trained oculofacial plastic and
reconstructive surgeon. I’ve been in practicing in Manhattan and Long Island for over 20 years.
I specialize in cosmetic eyelid surgery, face-lifting surgery and hair loss treatment. I would certainly
share with you my experience with people like yourself who to get the opportunity to use
something like Invisalign® to help realign their teeth.
So understanding that a facelift is really about restoring the relationship of sagging
skin with the underlying structure of the face. You could probably understand that Invisalign®
pertains to your teeth should not likely to have that much of an effect and I will explain
why. If you think about it, a facelift, what are we doing? We are lifting sagging cheeks.
We’re restoring jawline definition and we’re improving the angle of the neck. And so we’re
putting that much tension on the mouth, hopefully not. The way I do my face lifting is to preserve
mostly the center of the face particularly around the mouth so that there is no distortion.
Patients will often come and say, because they have seen celebrities and people that
they recognized whose corners of the mouths are pulled, they ask please don’t do that
to me and so I explain that‘s not in any way the intention of any face lifting type
of procedure. So with that being said, the position of the
teeth should not be really have that much of an impact on the soft tissue that we are
doing the facelift. So essentially, as far as the Invisalign® treatment is concerned,
depending on how much you need and how many sessions or how long you have to wear the
appliance, you can certainly do a facelift and still continue doing the Invisalign®
and you will not have any kind of any impact. And even if you are going to have other things
done through an intraoral approach from the inside of the mouth, whether it’s a cheek
implant or buccal fat pad reduction, teeth alignment should not be an issue.
I think that meeting with qualified and experienced cosmetic surgeons who performs a lot of facelifts
will give you some insights into this. And I think as a side note, it is important to
also make a distinction. When I perform face lifting surgery, we are doing it under local
anesthesia with LITE™ sedation which basically means I’m not concerned about doing anything
that can affect the position of the mouth. Now for my colleagues who do face lifting
under general anesthesia which I think at this point is still the majority, you might
have some concerns even though alignment of teeth and what happens during general anesthesia
are usually not in any way related. When an anesthesiologist puts a tube on your throat
and puts you in general anesthesia, they are very mindful of protecting the teeth and that
should not have an effect. I just don’t think from my approach and the way I do surgery
where the person’s face is relaxed and their orientation of their teeth is natural rather
having their mouth opened and being under anesthesia. I can certainly see no reason
why you can’t have facelift while still using Invisalign®.
So I hope that was helpful, I wish you the best of luck and thank you for your question!