FOREHEAD- & BROWLIFING

A forehead lift at our practice is an effective and long-lasting way to rejuvenate your face and draw attention to your eyes. Because the position of the eyebrows is a major indicator of age, if your eyebrows sag even a little bit, it can make you can look years older. A droopy forehead can cause your eyebrows to hood your eyelids, draw attention away from your eyes, and create a somewhat masculine appearance. On the other hand, a high arched eyebrow is a sign of youth and can draw attention to the eyes. For these reasons, many women pluck their eyebrows into an arch.

For men, the natural position of the eyebrows is slightly lower than for women. For this reason, drooping eyebrows can be even more of a problem for men. When the eyebrows begin to sag, they can almost immediately affect the upper eyelids, not only detracting from the appearance of the eyes, but also impairing peripheral vision. With more and more men becoming interested in facial plastic surgery, a forehead lift or a brow lift is a good option to correct functional as well as cosmetic problems associated with sagging eyebrows. At our practice, we are especially cognizant of your needs, taking care not to raise the eyebrows too much (as higher eyebrows can be feminizing). 

The forehead and eyebrows make up the upper one third of the face. Therefore, a forehead lift is a facelift of the upper one third of the face. To rejuvenate the entire face, you can combine your brow lift with a standard facelift or an eyelid lift at our practice. Alternatively, BOTOX® Cosmetic injections offer a less invasive alternative to the forehead lift.

Surgery

We recommend the standard forehead lift for severe age-related forehead and eyebrow furrows or wrinkles, as it provides more extreme correction than the less invasive endoscopic brow lift. The operation for a standard forehead lift takes approximately two hours . During the operation, you can choose to be awake, with intravenous sedation, or completely asleep under general anesthesia.

First, your surgeon will make an incision at the hairline of the forehead, where any scarring will be least noticeable. Then, the skin of the forehead is lifted to reveal the underlying muscle and tissue, which is summarily tightened to provide a firm underlying structure. The skin is pulled back and smoothed, and the incision is closed with small sutures and surgical staples. These are removed in seven to ten days. 

The forehead lift operation is performed on an outpatient basis, which means you will be able to return home on the day of your operation. A small plastic drain will remove any blood that accumulates overnight. This will be removed the next day in a short visit to our office.

Endoscopic Brow Lift

If your eyebrow or forehead sagging is limited, then an endoscopic brow lift may be an option for you. In this less invasive procedure, your brow lift surgeon will make five or six small incisions in the scalp. Through these incisions, a small video camera can be inserted, and the surgeon can improve the deep grooves of the forehead and raise the eyebrows. This procedure requires dramatically less healing time than the traditional brow lift surgery. We can discuss the endoscopic brow lift in more detail during a consultation at our office.

Recovery

Following a forehead lift, you should rest for 10 days. After this period, you can return to work, but you should wait three weeks to resume normal activities. Swelling and bruising will be minimal, but you may notice some numbness in the forehead and scalp for several months, as well as difficulty in raising your eyebrows. For most of our patients, these small nuisances are well worth the rejuvenating results of the brow lift. For everyone but you, your improved look will be subtle; people may comment on how well rested you look, or ask you if you have done something different with your hair.

Alone, the forehead lift can make you look between five to ten years younger. When combined with blepharoplasty, facelift, or skin treatments like microdermabrasion, the results can be even more dramatic.

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