The patient is a 42 year old woman who felt that her eyebrows were pushing down on her eyes and that bothered her. She also noted that she looked angry when she looked at herself in the mirror when applying make up. She felt she had a high hairline and didn’t want her hairline to be any higher from the surgery. At her procedure which was done under general anesthesia, a hairline bro lift was performed where the incision was exactly at her hairline. A space is made downward toward the brow on both sides and even further downward on the sides to release the skin and allow it to be lifted. Then, excess skin is removed at the top and the skin repaired to the hairline and so the hairline remained at the same level and not further up on the forehead. The patient was very happy with her cosmetic results and felt relieved that the sensation that her brow was resting on her eye was gone.
Hairline browlifts successfully lift drooping brows in a natural and harmonious way to achieve smooth contours and lend beauty to the face. The incision for this type of brow lift is lower than the usual incision which is at the top of the head, far from the brows that are trying to be lifted. So because they are closer they can give better pulls and better stabilization of tissues to prevent relapse and loosening. Also, because the incision in the hairline is lower, a space can be made further down over the cheek and that tissue can also be lifted to smooth the junction between the cheek and temple area. Brow lifts can be performed either alone or with other procedures like laser treatment for wrinkles and with facelifts. When brow lifts are performed with the laser, the most commonly lasered area is the Crow’s foot area which is the region just outside the eyes towards the temple area. Because of the aging process, this area can develop wrinkles that can eventuate into folds. The brow lift can unravel the folds but cannot eradicate the fine wrinkles and luckily, the laser can remove nearly all of these wrinkles. Other areas that can be lasered to remove wrinkles during a brow lift are the cheeks, and especially the area around the mouth which can develop very deep wrinkles. Though all of these areas can be treated alone, there might be better harmony when combining some of them and it’s more economical and there is less down time in their combination also. Recovery for a brow lift is generally five days with a return to work and about the same when laser treatment is done around the Crow’s foot areas and so it makes sense to combine these when they are both needed for improvement. The duration of healing when laser is performed around the mouth is variable because it depends on how deep the wrinkles are in that area. The deeper the wrinkles, the longer it takes to achieve dry skin and return to normal activities. When patients have very deep wrinkles around the mouth, it can take eight or nine days until they can return to public view but with average depth wrinkles the duration is more likely seven to eight days. As with all of these procedures, patients are walking outside the day after their procedure with a hat and sunglasses but as mentioned, the time for complete healing where the patient can be in public is longer. Browlift patients find that their healing is generally very quick and quicker that they thought because the brow skin has a large blood supply and most of the swelling is gone in three or four days. These patients can wear their hair to cover the incision and so it looks right away like they didn’t have anything done.
