The main benefits of getting a face lift pertain to improving your appearance and making you look younger. However, as with any surgery, there can also be a number of complications involved.

Benefits

  • Face lift procedures are most widely known for tightening sagging skin. This helps reduce the appearance of wrinkles and fine lines. More recently, however, surgeons have recognized that restoring the underlying facial features to a more youthful state is just as important to a face lift as is skin tightening.
  • As you age, the fat in your cheeks as well as other facial muscles tend to sag. So, in conjunction with tightening the skin, the plastic surgeon reconfigures the facial muscles into a more youthful arrangement. This helps the face lift last longer because it puts less tension on the tightened skin.
  • A face lift also can improve your facial contour. Surgeons now rearrange the structure of your face to ensure that you do not get that unnatural, “pulled” look. A mid face lift improves the contour of your lower eyelids and cheeks while a lower face lift gives a more attractive contour to your jawline and smoothes your neck.

Complications

  • Complications common to all surgeries are infections, bleeding, and an adverse reaction to anesthesia.
  • A complication specific to face lifts is injury to the nerves that control your facial muscles. However, this is generally only temporary.
  • Although the procedure for a face lift now has become somewhat advanced and surgeons scars are typically minimal, there is still the risk that there will be some scarring.
  • Sometimes, particularly with smokers, the skin has problems healing.
  • There can be numbness or tingling around the areas of the incisions. This, too, is usually temporary.

Due to the advanced nature of face lift surgery procedures now, your face lift surgery should make you look noticeably younger by changing the contours of your face and tightening loose skin. However, there are some possible complications involved. If you experience any of these, be sure to contact your physician.