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  • What is Tumescent Anesthesia?
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Tumescent anesthesia is basically dilute numbing medication and whenever we numb the skin we have to put a certain type, it's called Lidocaine. But it's numbing medication and we usually put in small amounts.

But Jeffrey Klein, back in the 1980s, demonstrated that you could actually use a dilute amount of Lidocaine, a weaker amount of this numbing medication, but put more in and then you could tumesce, means that you kinda swell the face where we do it for tumescent liposuction, too, under local anesthesia.

But for facelifts, I swell the face temporarily with this tumescent anesthesia. And it numbs everything and it also helps stop bleeding by at least compressing some of the superficial blood vessels temporarily. And that way I can do the facelift very safely and again, with much less patient recovery, no nausea, they can eat all the way up to the procedure. They can eat after the procedure not during the procedure, of course. But they're awake but they're usually nodding off or sleeping, and it's a pleasant experience for them.

What is Tumescent Anesthesia?

Doctor Hayes B. Gladstone explains what tumescent anesthesia and the advantages of using this technique for facelifts.