FlexFace
in Philadelphia

FlexFace in Philadelphia

Our Philadelphia clinic is at 1420 Locust St #421, Philadelphia, PA 19102, and it is where your consultation, your procedure and your follow-ups all happen — you are not consulted in one place and operated on in another. Consultations are free, run in English or Spanish, and end with a written quote rather than a range. Patients travelling in for flexface should plan to stay locally for the first night or two rather than fly home the same day, and to be back at the clinic for their early follow-up. Whichever clinic you choose, the surgeon is licensed in that state and the facility is accredited, and the practice responsible for your care is named in our terms rather than left vague.

What FlexFace is

FlexFace is awake contouring of the lower face and neck. Through a few tiny entry points under the chin and behind the ears, the fat that blurs the jawline and fills the area under the chin is removed with fine cannulas, and energy is applied under the skin to encourage the envelope to contract over the new contour. It is performed under local anesthesia with you awake and comfortable, and you walk out the same day. It is not a facelift and it is not sold as one: it removes volume and encourages tightening, but it does not reposition the deeper layer of the face or excise loose skin.

FlexFace or a facelift

The distinction comes down to what has actually gone wrong. If the problem is fullness — a soft jaw-to-neck line, a full area under the chin — and your skin still springs back when pinched, FlexFace addresses it directly with days of downtime instead of weeks. If the problem is descent — jowls hanging below the jawline, skin that stays where you put it when pinched, visible platysmal bands — then the tissue has moved and needs repositioning, which means a facelift or a neck lift. Removing fat from a face with real laxity makes the laxity more obvious, not less. A consultation that examines you and tells you which category you are in is worth more than any brochure.

Who makes a good candidate

Good candidates are typically between their late twenties and early fifties, have good to moderate skin elasticity, and are bothered by fullness rather than sagging. Patients with a genetically full lower face who have never had a defined jawline at any weight do particularly well. Patients who are significantly overweight will get a change proportional to what is removed but the underlying issue is weight, and an honest surgeon will say so. Patients with significant laxity are candidates for a lift, not for this.

How the procedure is done

Under local anesthesia in an accredited facility, taking around one to two hours. The area is marked with you sitting upright. Local anesthetic is infiltrated, which is the part patients notice most and is over quickly. Two or three entry points of a few millimetres are made — under the chin and behind the earlobes — and fine cannulas are used to remove fat evenly across the treated area, checking the contour against the other side throughout. Energy is then applied beneath the skin to stimulate contraction. Because you are awake, you can be asked to move and swallow, which helps the surgeon judge the result live. A compression garment is fitted before you leave.

Recovery, honestly

You wear a chin strap or facial compression garment most of the time for the first week, then at night for a few weeks more. Expect swelling and bruising under the chin and along the jaw for one to two weeks; the swelling makes the area look fuller before it looks better, which surprises people. Most patients are back to work in two to five days and out socially at two weeks. Numbness and firmness under the chin are normal and settle over one to three months. Skin retraction continues for around three months, so the jawline you see at three weeks is not the one you are keeping.

What it will not do

It will not lift a face that has descended, it will not remove excess skin, and it will not correct platysmal banding in the neck. It also has a ceiling set by your skin's ability to retract, which reduces with age and with sun damage. These limits are the reason the consultation matters: a patient sold FlexFace when they needed a neck lift will be disappointed by a technically well-performed procedure, and that is a failure of the conversation rather than of the surgery.

Cost, safety and choosing a surgeon

FlexFace at Goals starts at $7,250, confirmed at consultation, with a $500 deposit to reserve your date. It is often combined with FlexSculpt on the body in the same visit, or with chin augmentation where a weak chin is part of why the jawline reads as soft. Risks include contour irregularity, asymmetry, prolonged swelling, temporary numbness and, rarely, injury to the nerve branch that moves the lower lip. Ask your surgeon to pinch your skin in front of you and explain what they expect it to do afterwards — the answer to that question is the whole basis of whether this is the right procedure for you.