Well I have not been able to write much these days in this blog, as I was preparing to teach in China next week. I was invited to a gathering of cosmetic and plastic surgeons in Dialin China to give a lecture on and hold a work shop on face lifting. My assigned task is to teach facial anatomy and facial nerve. This is a very difficult task in that some how I have to figure out how to do this as it relates to face lifting and teach it in less than two days. Well I finally decided and completely my presentation.
Of course these are all physicians from China and Japan –maybe some other assorted cosmetic surgeons from Korea and who knows where else. I doubt there will be many westerners. Yet the face has extremely complex anatomy so I cant waste time even with Doctors. So I decided I will call my lecture “Essential Face Lift Anatomy”. What I will do is skip all the esoteric anatomical details and just get to pure essence. Maybe I should entitle this lecture “FACE LIFTING FOR DUMMIES” as I will give only the details that one needs to know when doing a face lift.
As far as complexity goes I am showing you a picture below which only shows a few of the details.
A few details
This picture from Netter’s textbook only shows the sensory nerve anatomy of the face. So you get an idea of how complex the face is. Then there are the muscles, the blood vessels , motor nerves, bone and other soft tissues.
We will have cadavers there to dissect to further the study for these plastic surgeons. I had done a facial nerve (and peripheral nerve) fellowship for one year under Dr. Julia Terzis at the microsurgical research center, so I guess that is why they asked me to teach. In face lifting the most important structure is the nerve as injury to the facial nerve is the worse complications. I am very happy that I spent a entire year focused on that and it has certainly helped me in face lifting. I do get referrals from other surgeons who have injured the facial nerve during cosmetic surgery but fortunately this is very rare and they for the most part of been temporary.
At any rate I will enjoy a quick look at China and see how cosmetic surgery is done there. I will let you know about this as it unfolds.
Doctor808
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