How is a Lifestyle Lift Different from a Traditional Face Lift?

LifeStyle Lifts are full facelift incision minilifts, performed through a company which has licensed the name. Doctors sign onto the service and give a percentage of their fee to the company for performing their advertising. The advertisements show pictures of patients who have achieved excellent results. From the patients I have seen who have had LSL procedures, these results are not at all typical. Judging from the posts on this website, the results were unsatisfactory to a number of patients. Why are so many patients unhappy?

The devil is in the details.

When a facelift is performed with minimal undermining (as with a LSL), the skin does not advance properly. You haven't reached the tissues to pull on them. Instead, you are pulling on adjacent tissues, and the force to the target tissues (i.e. loose skin of the jowl area) is reduced. Surgically speaking, you're not there yet. Established facelift surgeons simply do not stop at this point, because the surgery is not done, and they know their patients would not be happy with the jowls still being there. It is difficult enough with deep facelift techniques to achieve significant improvement, let alone if you only do half the surgery. I suspect that many LSL patients are unhappy because they expected full facelift results from a minimal procedure, and it did not happen.

Why do so many patients complain of unsatisfactory scarring with the LSL?

In an LSL, minimal undermining is performed. In order to tighten the tissues beyond where the cuts are made, more tension must be placed on the incisions, and the incisions are closed tightly. When incisions are closed tightly, the skin, a biologic material "gives way". It stretches at the weakest point, the incision. The scars can become wide and unsightly. The ear can develop a deformed, scarred appearance. Did LSL patients realize they would have all the incisions of a facelift but only minimal pulling? You can see by the posts on this website that many did not.

Are all minilifts bad?

No. Many patients benefit from a mini-facelift, especially women who are young and have minimal looseness. However these mini-lifts require even more skill and finesse than a traditional facelift. Why? Because you are creating an incision in a young person's face. The scars MUST look good to justify the incisions. Every responsible doctor wants to leave his patient with minimal evidence of plastic surgery, and a nice before-after result.

What about the dangerous general anesthetic?

Any procedure, including mini-lifts and LSL procedures can be performed under local anesthesia. Any doctor can perform a procedure under local anesthesia. Nobody has a corner on the market on an $8 bottle of lidocaine. Local anesthesia is not always pleasant, as the posts indicate. Under local anesthesia, surgery is performed on you while you are awake. You feel the needles. You feel the pulling. You experience pain. Many patients feel anxious. Many patients do not want to experience this. Modern superlight anesthetics, when performed by a board certified anesthesiologist in a hospital or accredited outpatient surgery center, in a patient who has been medically cleared, have an enormously high safety profile. Patients should make decisions in an informed fashion of what the alternative are, not avoid general anesthetic because it is unsafe.

Is LSL state of the art?

No. Modern facelifts performed by skilled surgeons do not just pull. They pull smart. They pull in different directions because the face is complex and not unidimensional. They adjust the SMAS layer, restoring fullness of the cheekbones, diminishing unwanted volume in the jowls. They restore volume in other parts of the face. They rejuvenate the mouth, the corners of the mouth, the eye area, the cheek area, the brow when needed.

I am not worried about the patients who reach this website. They are informed consumers and intelligent enough to do their research and make smart choices. I am worried about patients who never reach this website because they saw an ad, a low price and never looked back.

 

Hello, Lifestyle Lift is the name of a company that was known for doing facelifts type surgeries under local anesthesia. It is no longer in business. They built an amazing brand and grew the market for facelifts, making it a procedure within reach for the average person. Contrary to popular belief, there was no standard “Lifestyle Lift”. The company pretty much allowed their surgeons freedom to do whatever type of facelift they thought appropriate for an individual patient. Most of their surgeons performed facelifting with tightening of the SMAS (the supporting layer of the muscles of the face). In other words, it was a facelift done under local anesthesia and not a watered down version of a facelift as is generally believed. This brings us up to the next point: the “traditional facelift”. Plastic surgeons perform many types of facelift...skin only, skin with SMAS plication, skin with lateral SMASectomy, MACS facelifting, high lateral SMAS facelifts, composite facelifting, etc. All are called facelifts and all can be effective. I know this creates confusion for the consumer, and in fact it creates confusion for plastic surgeons. It is therefore important to ask your plastic surgeon what type of facelift he or she plans on performing, and why. Experience is very important, as it is one of the more complex surgeries performed in aesthetic surgery, an also one where the result can depend upon the individual technique of the surgeon.

Thank you for your question. Lifestyle Lift is the name of a company that was known for doing facelifts type surgeries under local anesthesia. It is no longer in business. They built an amazing brand and grew the market for facelifts, making it a procedure within reach for the average person. Contrary to popular belief, there was no standard “Lifestyle Lift”. The company pretty much allowed their surgeons freedom to do whatever type of facelift they thought appropriate for an individual patient. Most of their surgeons performed facelifting with tightening of the SMAS (the supporting layer of the muscles of the face). In other words, it was a facelift done under local anesthesia and not a watered down version of a facelift as is generally believed. This brings us up to the next point: the “traditional facelift”. Plastic surgeons perform many types of facelift...skin only, skin with SMAS plication, skin with lateral SMASectomy, MACS facelifting, high lateral SMAS facelifts, composite facelifting, etc. All are called facelifts and all can be effective. I know this creates confusion for the consumer, and in fact it creates confusion for plastic surgeons. It is therefore important to ask your plastic surgeon what type of facelift he or she plans on performing, and why. Experience is very important, as it is one of the more complex surgeries performed in aesthetic surgery, an also one where the result can depend upon the individual technique of the surgeon.

Hello! Thank you for your question! I can only answer for my practice as a former Lifestyle Lift surgeon in Ontario, CA. I currently have a private practice in the same location in Ontario. During my time with Lifestyle Lift, I was ranked as one of the highest in patient satisfaction. I performed my surgeries as extensively and thoroughly as a standard facelift. In my practice, there is no difference between a Lifestyle Lift and a Standard Face Lift.  Because I had accumulated a great deal of surgical experience, I was able to perform the procedure as efficiently as was described in the Lifestyle Lift literature, which means shorter operating times and quicker recovery with equivalent results to the traditional face lift. 

Hi and thanks for your question. I can comment on the Lifestyle Lift Orange County, CA location and practices. Lifestyle Lift was one of the first plastic surgery practices to market lower facelifts under local anesthesia and oral sedation. The concept became so popular that many private practices now have similar marketed names for their facelifts under local anesthesia. The Orange County, CA Lifestyle Lift location was one of the most successful offices. Among the Lifestyle Lift locations across the country, the Orange County office had consistently one of the highest patient satisfaction ratings in the nation based on independent surveys year after year.  The success of each clinic was highly dependent on the surgeon. The best surgeons at Lifestyle Lift were highly experienced, performing thousands of facial rejuvenation procedures during their careers there, such as myself. Each best surgeon performed their individual lower facelifts tailored to each individual patients' needs just as any surgeon would in their private practices. There was no proprietary technique, and it was not a mini lift in my hands. For example most commonly, I performed a complete neck lift with liposuction and platysmaplasty and a full lower SMASectomy facelift. Other surgeons in various locations perform what is best suited for their patients so the operation will differ.  With the ultimate closing of Lifestyle Lift, there remain the best former Lifestyle Lift surgeons out there who are experts in facial rejuvenating procedures under local anesthesia. Fortunately, many of these surgeons are now in private practice. If you are seeking to rejuvenate your face and neck, please research carefully online to find a surgeon who has successfully performed thousands of local anesthesia face and neck lifts.

LifeStyle Lift is trademark for a medical corporation located in Troy Michigan. This corporation hires surgeons with different level of experience and expertise to perform lower facelift using local anesthesia. LifeStyle Lift corporation emphasizes on mini facelift techniques for quick recovery. However some of their surgeons are able to perform traditional facelift using local anesthesia. The bottom line is no matter where you go, the surgeon must be experienced in facelift surgery with good results.