KRIS Jenner’s rumored deep plane facelift will have been riskier but leave her looking youthful for years to come, a top New York surgeon has revealed.
Kris, 69, had fans in a frenzy when she stepped out with a new face this month, looking decades younger.
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The reality star’s rep confirmed to Page Six she underwent aesthetic enhancements from New York plastic surgeon Dr. Steven Levine ahead of her 70th birthday.
Although it has not been revealed exactly what she had done, many critics have suggested she underwent a deep plane facelift as opposed to a regular SMAS procedure.
In an exclusive chat with The U.S. Sun, Dr. Norman Rowe, who did not do Kris’s work but specializes in deep plane facelifts, explained the difference between the two surgeries.
Dr. Rowe said he felt her previous work was “tasteful” and he could immediately tell she’d had a facelift when she stepped out recently – believed to be her second.
But he praised Kris for maintaining her looks doing everything from using sun protection to Botox and lasering.
He said, “Once you get one of those things done, it’s not like you’re one and done. It’s a maintenance thing.
“So she kept her face, you know, up. And she did well. And I think she looks good for her age. I like the result.”
Asked how much it would cost to have the procedure done, he said, “It depends on whether or not you’re getting it in Cincinnati, Ohio, or Miami or New York or LA. I mean, it can range from, five figures to six figures.
RISKY PROCEDURE
“I do deep planes. I like a deep plane. I switched almost completely over to deep planes.
“I just like the results better. It’s more reliable. And, in my opinion, I think it lasts a little longer.”
Explaining the difference between a regular facelift and a deep plane facelift, he said, “Below our skin and below the fat, there’s a muscle layer, and it’s called the superficial musculoaponeurotic system, or SMAS, we call it for short.
“When you do a facelift, you cut out a little sliver of that SMAS and suture the two ends back together to tighten it up. And usually you cut out the sliver somewhere here along the jawline or in here, and you suture together and it pulls it tighter.
“So if you think, all right, so that’s one way to do it, cut out a section of it.
“Another way to do it is make an incision. You get underneath the SMAS, you lift up the muscle and then you pull it.
“Imagine if you have a carpet in your house and it has a bubble in it, a wrinkle. There are two ways you could take care of it. You could go along and cut out that wrinkle and then take [that] thread and suture the opening back up. Or you could go to the end of the carpet at the edge of the room and pull the carpet taut.
“That’s basically the difference between a SMAS and a deep plane.
“A SMAS takes out that extra piece by cutting it out directly and suturing together, whereas the deep plane goes to the edge of the muscle, which is right around here in the neck, in the ear.
The U.S. Sun asked Dr. Rowe about the advantages of choosing a deep plane procedure over a regular facelift.
“In my opinion, I think a deep plane lasts a little bit longer,” he said.
NERVE DAMAGE
“You get a little bit more of a tightening of the muscles when you pull the whole carpet. The dissection is deeper, is further underneath the muscle.”
He explained not as many people are trained to carry out deep plane facelifts and they can carry risks.
“I think, honestly, still, the majority of people out there doing facelifts are probably doing SMAS. It’s still kind of like the go-to technique.
“It ultimately depends on the surgeon’s comfort in doing that deep plane to that point. I’ll be honest, it is a little bit more risky than, say, a SMAS.
“The nerves that give us our movement in our face to give us our smile, our grimace, and things like that, all of our muscles, the nerves are underneath the muscle.
“And so if you’re lifting up that muscle to pull that muscle taut, then you can injure those nerves. So there’s a little bit [of] risk of that. But again, if you know what you’re doing.
“In most residency programs, people just aren’t doing deep planes because it’s a little bit riskier. And so they don’t do them. And so residents learn SMAS and they go out and then they do [them] because they weren’t trained in deep planes.”
Dr. Rowe explains there are different varieties of the deep plane facelift from the subtle to the more aggressive, and it depends on the person.
“The only way to know [what Kris had done] is to look at her five or 10 years from now,” he said. “If she still looks good, it’s probably a deep plane … if she starts to show little signs of aging. Probably wasn’t.
The Kardashian matriarch began her journey with plastic surgery when she got breast implants in the 1980s after giving birth to her first four children: Kourtney, Kim, Khloé, and Rob Kardashian.
She has continued her cosmetic upkeep and revealed that she’s gotten Botox and fillers over the years.
Explaining the deep plane procedure, Dr. Rowe continued, “Most people do it under general anesthesia. It’s a little bit too much to do under twilight, a facelift.
“And again, when we talk about a facelift, a facelift generally includes a neck lift. So we call it fan face and neck lift.
“The incision is placed in the hairline, and by the temple, it goes in front of the ear and then behind the ear. So it kind of looks like a J.
“The surgery takes somewhere around two and a half to three hours, generally for a face and a neck lift.
“Sometimes I’ll put an additional incision in underneath their chin in order to tighten up the muscles of the neck.”
“Recovery? It depends on if someone gets something else done.
“A lot of times people will couple that with eyelid surgery, a brow lift, sometimes we’ll laser.
“I won’t be super aggressive when I laser because you don’t want to injure the skin any more than or traumatize the skin, any more than it’s already been traumatized by surgery.”
SURGERY AGE
Dr. Rowe explained Kris would have been able to start wearing makeup three or four days after the surgery but may still have had some bruising.
“You can walk around. I probably wouldn’t plan on any social events for a couple of weeks after the surgery. I wouldn’t get it done three weeks before a wedding.”
He revealed there can be complications including nerve injury but it is “rare”.
“There are three main complications. There’s a nerve injury, the incision opening up, and then also immediate post-operative bleeding, which if there is bleeding, then within the first eight hours, then you go back and you stop it.
“That’s not a permanently disfiguring complication, whereas a nerve injury, maybe. And an incision opening up behind the ear and a wide scar, maybe.”
He said he would not do a facelift for anyone in their 20s, but he has seen women in their 30s in need of surgery if they have not maintained their looks.
“What’s the perfect age? When you need it. I see 30 or I see 35 year olds who need a facelift, and I see 65 year olds who need a facelift,” he said.
“I see 35 year olds who don’t need it, and I see 65 who don’t need it. So it depends on your body, your lifestyle, how much sun you got, what you’ve done to maintain your skin, what have you done in the past?
“It’s like a car. If you take care of your car, your car will get 100,000 miles on. If you beat the heck out of it, you’ll be done after 20,000 miles.
“So it’s the same thing with your body and your face.
“If you take care of yourself, you might push off the need for a facelift. And then when you do need it, you’re more likely to say, okay, fine, let’s do it.
“Whereas if you don’t take care of it, you’re definitely going to need it. And whether you agree to it or not, you know, that’s another thing.”
He added, “What’s the youngest I’ve done … 37. She never set foot into a plastic surgeon’s office. She actually lost some weight. And so she needed a facelift.
“And we see that now with the Ozempic phase, people are losing weight, and they come in at a younger age who need facelifts and things like that.”
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