One of the questions I get a lot from patients when they come in for facelift consults is am I too young or am I too old to have a facelift. What I have found in my 25 years of doing plastic surgery is that people coming in their 60s, 70s, and even at 80. I just did a facelift on an 80-year-old a week and a half ago, and she did amazingly well.

What I’ve discovered is as this generation ages, they’re staying healthier. They exercise every day, they’ve been taking good care of their skin with facial products. So when they come in at 65, 70 and ask am I too old to have a facelift, absolutely not. So what I tell my patients who are younger when they come in asking if I’m too young, I ask them, well, what bothers you? What would you like to see different? If a facelift is going to fix that, then that’s the procedure they should have.

There’s a stigma out there that one should not have facial surgery or facelift when you’re in your 40s or 30s because you’re too young, you don’t need it. Well, some people actually do need it when they’re 30 or 40 because whether it be genetics, smoking, or being in the sun a lot, their facial tissues have drooped or they’ve developed significant wrinkling, or things have just dropped, or they’ve developed an accumulation of fat that they don’t like how it looks when they look in the mirror. If they want to do things that are non-surgical like fillers or liposuction or laser, well, that’s fine. But if it’s not going to address the concerns that they see when they look in the mirror, then a facelift is the answer.