Two popular minilift procedures

Given the overwhelmingly negative blogs and comments on this website alone why patients are still undergoing and contemplating these mini-lifts, including the two procedures described above?

What is the advantage of making all the incisions of a real facelift but just performing small undermining?  You can see by the posts it is not scarring.  Closing incisions under tension causes pressure on the incisions to open up or widen.  Wide hypertrophic scars tend to be unsightly, depigment, and itch, all common complaints on the message boards. 

Judging from the posts, it is not better results either, since the amount of pulling to correct jowling is less with a minilift than with a real facelift.  Many of the posts reflect inadequate or disappointing rejuvenation.

Minilifts are definitely cheaper, because they are often marketed and performed under local anesthesia and entail much less surgery than a real facelift.  Many of the posts reflect a considerably painful experience during the surgery.  Any surgery, inncluding real facelifts, can be performed under local anesthesia with sedation.  It is not always the most comfortable option, but it can certainly be done.

Are there many very happy LSL patients out there?  Perhaps.  But the LSL patients I have seen in my practice have been uniformly unhappy and have had unsatisfactory and sometimes incredible scarring.  In all fairness maybe only unhappy patients seek our office out because our most common procedure is revision facelifts.  However judging from the posts that is not the case either, since most patients posting on this board were unhappy with their LSL lifts.

I have several posts on this website on this topic, so I won't belabor the point.  I would advise patients who think they are going to get a $20,000 facelift for $5000 to research further and read the comments posted by actual patients carefully. 

The good news for unhappy LSL patients is that these procedures can usually be revised and converted to real facelifts by sugeons skilled in the techniques of revision facelifts.

Many patients will seek techniques that sometimes sound too good to be true.  A nice facelift will address excess, lax skin as well as the underlying soft tissues/muscles.  Techniques that utilize too much tension on the skin will lead to undesireable, tell-tale signs of a bad facelift.

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