A long-term follow-up study in the December issue of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery found that even five years after their procedure, three quarters of facelift patients look younger than they did before their surgery.
In order to reach this conclusion, study authors Dr. Barry M. Jones and Dr. Steven J. Lo analyzed before and after photographs of fifty different facelift patients using three sets of criteria: 1) objective measurements (the height of the jowls, the angle of the chin to the neck); 2) subjective assessments of the appearance of key areas (lines from the nose to mouth and from the mouth to the chin); and 3) an overall subjective global score rating the patient’s appearance. The result? “Scoring suggested that 76 percent of patients will still look younger 5½ years after a facelift than they did prior to the facelift,” say Drs. Jones and Lo.
In fact, they found that nearly all the areas addressed by a face lift stand the test of time well. When it comes to jowl height and lines around the mouth, there is very little loss of improvement, even after five years. The only area that shows real deterioration in the years after the procedure is the neck, which they found suffers a 70 percent loss of improvement after an average of five and a half years—but overall, they say, “the vast majority of patients will continue to look better several years after surgery than they did before.”
If you’re interested in learning more about facelift surgery, please don’t hesitate to call my offices and set up an appointment for a consultation!
