[The early days of aesthetic surgery: facelift pioneers Eugen Holländer (1867-1932) and Erich Lexer (1967-1937)]

Abstract

Introduction and background: The human desire to achieve an improved/better way of looking can be traced back through all times of human history and culminated in the realm of plastic surgery in the beginning of the early 20th century. In particular a main interest was hereby the so-called facelift surgery and the first two German pioneers in this field: Eugen Holländer and Erich Lexer.

Aim of the paper: The surgeons Eugen Holländer and Erich Lexer contributed to a big part to the development of facelift techniques. The paper aims to highlight in which way both surgeons conducted their research work and the topic of facelift and which findings could be drawn out of their work.

Method: On the basis of old specialist literature and congressional quotations the curriculua vitae of Eugen Holländer and Erich Lexer are portrayed, as well as their professional career and their ground breaking work for facelift surgery and its differences amongst each other.

Conclusion: Both Eugen Holländer and Erich Lexer performed, independently from another, the first facelifts in Germany. Hereby, their operative approach was different. In contrast to Holländer who only performed skin resections for a better tightening of the face, Lexer undermined the skin in an area of multiple centimetres.Even in their suture technique the difference was visible. Lexer for instance conducted a special suture technique by including the fascia temporalis superficialis in his sutures for achieving lasting stability and tension relief. Due to this reason Lexer can be regarded without any doubt as the initial pioneer of modern facelift surgery.