Brow Lift /or Temple Lift - What is the Best for Me?

Be very careful when asking for a brow lift, you might get it.  If you look up brow lift results in published papers and before and afters you will see that many surgeons successfully lift the brow.  Unfortunately a true brow lift makes patients look scared or surprised!  It is almost never necessary to elevate the medial third of the brow.  Many women actually benefit aesthetically from a slight lowering of the medial third.  On the contrary, there are few women even at your age that would not benefit from elevation of their lateral brow.  The reason for this is probably not what you think.  Much more important than the brow positionand shape is the infra brow skin.  If you look at yourself in the mirror you will see some bunching of skin under the brow next to your eye and a flat shape.  I call this the lateral hood.  The only kind of brow lift that I typically perform in women of your age I call a lateral hood lift.  If you gently pull up on your forehead skin above the lateral brow, you will see that a very subtle elevation makes you look younger.  This is mostly because it cleans up the lateral hood.  It is usually necessary to also restore brow volume at the same time as a lateral hood lift to create a beautiful rejuvenated shape.  I hope this helps!

All the best,

Rian A. Maercks M.D.

Your brows are naturally low, which can be considered a good or bad thing, depending on your wishes and desires. They are also slanted upward in the temple portion of the brow.

Because you have performed a blepharoplasty prior to a brow lift, you may not be able to perform a brow lift at this time.  With a brow lift in addition to the blepharoplasty, your eyes may not be able to close while lying back during sleep.

There is a functional medical aspect to these surgeries that takes precedence over aesthetic considerations.  I'd wait awhile.

When the time comes, an endoscopic brow lift should work for you.  You certainly do not need a lateral brow or temple lift, as the outer (lateral) portions of your brow are already high enough.

 

"Beauty is in the eye of the beholder." Many would say you have pretty eyes, others would agree with you that they are relatively low. The key to what procedure if any is recommended has to do with what you want to accomplish. For example if it is just the lateral brow (side closest to your temple) you could start with some Botox or Dysport injections to lift this a little bit. If not enough then a short scar temple lift  might be beneficial. If you would like to lift the entire brow than I would suggest the least invasive lift which would be an endoscopic approach rather than a coronal brow lift (most invasive).

Here is my suggestion: with your finger on your forehead above your brow, "play around" with various positions to see how much and what aspect of the brow needs changing. Another suggestion is to take some high quality photos and "play" with the position of your brows on photo software or seek consultation from a plastic surgeon who offers this technology to see in advance what you might look like after various procedures.

Your eyebrows are shaped very nicely, but both the inner and outer parts appear to be too low.  Therefore, you may want to explore a coronal brow lift.  Just lifting the outer parts with a temporal lift may give you the "surprised" look.

From your photos you look like you could have "killed 2 birds with one stone " if you had the brow lift before your lid surgery. Definitely the forehead browlift is the better choice. A temple lift will make you look evil.

You are an attractive lady. I can see why you would possibly think that you have sad eyes. One I think that you eyebrow may be a little low but not terribly low. A brow lift could help you brighten up the appearance of your eyes. One thing that could help you is if you thinned your eyebrows through judicious brow waxing and hair plucking.  Also lightening your eyebrows could help.  But a brow lift could increase this distance and make your eyes look softer.  The distance between your eyelid margin and eyebrows should be around one iris width and not much more than 1 1/2 iris widths.  A temple lift would concentrate on your lateral portion of your eyebrow.  A brow lift would be the whole eyebrow lifted. In my opinion, I think you need the medial part of your eyebrow lifted as much as your lateral part of your eyebrow, if not more. I would do a brow lift and not just a temple lift.

Thanks for reading, Dr Young

A brow lift is the better operation since a temporal lift is only a skin removal and the skin will have stretch back and it will only address the lateral part of the brow.  It is best to perform a brow lift so that the entire forehead and brows are adjusted together.  The frontalis, corrugator, and/or procerus muscles can be adjusted as well, but only when needed.  

You have low set brows and any procedure that will elevate your brows will benefit your look. Elevating the forehead with endoscopic forehead lift will elevate your entire forehead including brows, which should be done  more on the left side to improve the asymmetry of your brow, as well as the wrinkles.

Overall, the result from your initial surgery looks quite good.  Aesthetically, the problem that you have is in the medial brow and not really so much the lateral brow.  A temporal lift corrects the lateral brow and would, in my opinion make things look worse.  Here are my suggestions: consider seeing an esthetician for some brow shaping, this should correct the appearance of the medial brow and you might find this to be an acceptable solution.  You could also try botox.  By treating the depressor muscles of the brow, it might be possible to elevate the brow position enough that you are happy.  If these solutions are not satisfactory, a full browlift would be the surgical procedure of choice.

The procedure should serve the goal . What are your goals? Is it to reduce the hanging below your brows or to reshape your brows? There is no ideal. Define what you want to achieve as to your look. Having said that, a temporal lift will lift the tail end of your brow. It is usually used to correct lateral hooding of the eyelid which you do not have. A full brow lift will have the option of lifting the entire brow as a unit. You can still lift the lateral brow more or less than the medial or inner brow. My sense is that a full brow is what would make your eyes more open but you have to pay attention to the overall shape of the brow (i.e. not raise the iner brow too much) and to the space between your pupil and the brow (i.e., not create too much of a space).

Robin T.W. Yuan, M.D.