Please appreciate the faint neck lift incision line and drastically improved neck contour of this 62-year-old male 6 months following neck lift surgery.
Proper Positioning of Neck Lift Incisions
Neck lift incisions must be positioned strategically to provide the capacity to remove redundant skin, leverage to pull up on the neck skin, yet be hidden from direct view. They must avoid all tension along the hairline to avoid injury to hair follicles that might result in hair loss.
Neck lift incisions must follow the natural curves of the hairline and the ear in areas where they are exposed. Incisions must be hidden when possible such as going into the tragus (focal prominence in the front of the ear) and be hidden behind the ear in the naturally occurring gulley. When neck lifts are properly placed and repaired without undue tension, they will fade with time and be invisible to the naked eye.
Neck lift procedures located in the hairline are specifically beveled to allow the most anterior hair follicles to grow through them making them virtually invisible. When placing leverage on the neck skin to make the neck skin taut, it is critical to place areas of tension behind the ear gulley only where any scar prominence is hidden and treatable.
The incisions should be transparent when healed after a surgery performed properly. Neck lift surgery performed properly will provide optimum neck tightness while avoiding undue tension and subsequent scarring. Incisions should be examined when looking at neck lift before and afters. The patient admitted to never having any neck definition throughout his adult years and this was worsened by the aging signs of skin redundancy.
