New York Surgeons Introduce the EMPIRE Lift, a Hybrid Facelift That Truly Repositions the Midface

Dr. Masoud Saman, double board certified facial plastic surgeon

Drs. Saman and Ahmedli combine endoscopic and deep plane techniques to avoid overfilling faces with fat, in a safer procedure with a shorter incision.

NEW YORK, NY, UNITED STATES, November 2, 2026 /EINPresswire.com/ -- Saman Facial Plastic Surgery today announced the EMPIRE Lift (Endoscopic Multi-Planar Integrated REjuvenation), a hybrid facelift developed by facial plastic surgeons Dr. Masoud Saman and Dr. Nigar Ahmedli. The technique lifts the midface endoscopically on the bone and lifts the lower face and neck in the deep plane, so each region of the face moves back along the path it actually descended. It is the latest in a series of advances in facelift surgery, and it targets a specific problem: the growing habit of overfilling faces with fat to disguise a midface that was never truly lifted.

Facelift surgery has changed, and so has the patient. The extended deep plane facelift releases the retaining ligaments and repositions deeper tissue rather than pulling skin, producing results that look natural, hold up over time and heal predictably. At Saman Facial Plastic Surgery, facelift patients now routinely arrive in their 40s and 50s rather than their 70s. They want to enjoy the result for decades, and they have learned, often expensively, that lasers, fillers and radiofrequency devices cannot do what a facelift does. A growing number skip years of maintenance treatments and go directly to the procedure that addresses the underlying problem.

The endoscopic facelift, an older concept now enjoying a resurgence, lifts the midface through small incisions hidden in the scalp. Dr. Saman, whose early career centered on endoscopic sinus and skull base surgery, trained in the technique and has performed it on patients at the practice. That experience exposed its ceiling: in older patients and anyone with heavy jowling, it does not adequately address the lower face and neck.

The deep plane facelift has the opposite weakness. It handles the jowls and neck well, but the midface, which descends vertically along the cheekbone, is pulled along a more horizontal vector and is never truly repositioned. The common workaround is fat grafting to fill the hollow left behind. After hundreds of deep plane facelifts, Dr. Saman concluded that camouflage was standing in for correction.

He brought the problem to Dr. Ahmedli, a double board-certified facial plastic surgeon who shares the practice's facelift caseload, and the two went back to the drawing board. The result is a hybrid procedure with a novel modification. The midface is released and lifted endoscopically in the subperiosteal plane and repositioned vertically. The jowls and neck are then addressed through an extended deep plane dissection, each along its own correct vector. Because the midface is restored to its anatomic position rather than filled, fat grafting to the cheek is generally no longer needed. Working on the bone also makes the midface portion safer than an extended dissection through the cheek, and the procedure is completed through a shorter incision.

"The deep plane facelift is the best lower face and neck operation we have ever had, and I have performed hundreds of them," said Dr. Saman. "But I kept looking at the midface afterward and feeling that we had settled. We were adding fat to hide what the lift had not accomplished. The midface needs to be lifted on the bone, straight up, along the line it came down."

"Every region of the aging face descends in its own direction, so one plane and one vector were always going to be a compromise somewhere," said Dr. Ahmedli. "The EMPIRE Lift lets us treat the midface, the jowls and the neck as three distinct problems inside one operation."

The name describes the procedure and is also an homage to New York City, where the technique was developed. The EMPIRE Lift is now offered at Saman Facial Plastic Surgery on Central Park South.

About Saman Facial Plastic Surgery

Saman Facial Plastic Surgery is a boutique Manhattan practice focused exclusively on rhinoplasty and facial rejuvenation. Dr. Masoud Saman, MD, FACS, is a double board-certified facial plastic surgeon, directs an American Academy of Facial Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery fellowship, has trained more than 45 surgeons on five continents, and is the author of The Smart Guide to Rhinoplasty (2025). Dr. Nigar Ahmedli, MD, is a double board-certified facial plastic surgeon and co-developer of the EMPIRE Lift. Both surgeons are available for interviews.

Parya Etebari
Saman Facial Plastic Surgery
+1 214-535-9554