Seattle Facelift doctors

Ideally, your surgeon chooses their preferred incisions based on extensive training and experience and by following their patients closely for years and modifying the incisions as indicated.  Also, the specific anatomy of the patient may dictate an incisional choice.

What you don't want is a surgeon who bases their incision choice on market pressures such as can be seen sometimes in "short scar surgery" where the scar really needed to be longer for a nice fine line (great tailoring), but instead was bunched up in the closure to make it shorter (shorter but worse looking scar). 

There are a few options regarding the type of anesthesia that is best for full facelift surgery.

• In some cases local anesthesia can be used for more limited facelift surgery.
• IV sedation (without a breathing tube) or general anesthesia are best for longer procedures.
• With general anesthesia an LMA ("laryngeal mask airway") can be used which involve a tube that stays above the voice box.
• Another method is to use an endotracheal tube in which a breating tube is placed past the vocal cords.

I understand your concerns regarding using a breathing tube and injuring your dental work. It's quite rare to injure the teeth, though. I'd recommend consulting with a few board certified facial plastic surgeons or plastic surgeons to see what your options are and discuss your concerns further.

It is absolutely not wise to do a facelift at a residency program.  These well intentioned young surgeons have no experience with this compared to a seasoned private practitioner.  There is no way the result would be as good.