What complications can follow a facelift?

Every facelift decision rests on one question: what can go wrong?

The published list

The American Society of Plastic Surgeons publishes its facelift risks as a single list and calls them rare. Facelift risks, while rare, include anesthesia risks, bleeding, deep vein thrombosis, cardiac and pulmonary complications, facial nerve injury with weakness, fluid accumulation, infection, numbness or other changes in skin sensation, persistent pain, poor wound healing and skin loss, prolonged swelling, skin irregularities and discoloration, sutures that may surface through the skin, become visible or cause irritation that requires removal, temporary or permanent hair loss at the incisions, and unfavorable scarring.

The same list adds a separate kind of problem. Unsatisfactory results may include asymmetry, unsatisfactory surgical scar location and unacceptable visible deformities at the ends of the incisions.

How to use it before you choose

This list belongs to the stage before you choose a surgeon, because each entry is a topic for the consultation. Ask which of them the surgeon prepares patients for and how the office responds when one appears.

The signs that change the picture

After surgery, bleeding, fluid accumulation, infection and persistent pain all appear on that list. Any of them is a reason to call the surgeon's office promptly rather than wait and see.

The question that usually follows

Next comes whether you are a suitable candidate at all. UCSF Health publishes a facelift treatment page, and Healthdirect Australia keeps its own facelift procedure page.