Blog Article

How Many Years Does a Facelift Take From Your Face?

Posted on February 21st, 2012 in Facial Surgery

Questions of beauty and appearance are often subjective, and it can often be difficult to attach a number to something as elusive as cosmetic enhancement. However, a recent effort headed by University of Toronto plastic surgeon Dr. Nitin Chauhan provided some promising results, which have been published in the latest issue of Archives of Facial Plastic Surgery. It seems that patients undergoing facial surgery can appear about 7 years younger on average. The new study began with the recruitment of 40 first-year medical students, who were asked to look at a collection of photographs. These were before-and-after pictures, separated and scrambled, of patients who had undergone different facial rejuvenation surgeries at Dr. Chauhan’s clinic: 54 women and 6 men, aged 45 to 72. The medical students were asked to estimate the age of the person in each photo. On average, the study found that patients who had undergone facial surgery appeared 7.2 years younger than their before photo. Since after photos are normally taken months or even years after the surgery, this actually meant that the average age that the students assigned to the after photos was about 9 years lower than the patients’ age when the photos were taken. Not surprisingly, the study found that multiple procedures resulted in significantly better results, shaving further years off patients’ faces. Patients who underwent facelift and neck lift surgeries looked 5.7 years younger, while additional eyelid surgery removed almost two more years, and a forehead lift took roughly another year from the face. People who had all four surgeries – facelift, neck lift, blepharoplasty, and forehead lift – appeared a full 8.4 years younger than their before photos. Dr. Chauhan hopes to use these results as an objective measure that can be used to manage patient expectations. “Nothing we do is magical,” he told Health.com contributor Matt McMillen. “We do certainly get 60-year-old patients who want to look 40, and this will help us when we discuss expectations.”