Complications and long-term patient satisfaction after endoscopic brow lift
Reviewed by Eduardo Morera Serna

The authors present the results of a study of recovery, complications and overall satisfaction of patients with endoscopic brow lift with or without concurrent rhytidectomy made by a single surgeon. The study was performed through a telephonic interview using a 47 questions form; 107 patients were eligible for the study and 57 of them were finally recruited. Issues like oedema, scars, bleeding, pain and frontal numbness, improvement of headaches or recommendation of the procedure to other people were addressed in this survey; a statistical analysis of the obtained data was done. The results showed a very high patient satisfaction with the procedure (93% perceived the surgery as an overall success) with improvements in self-appearance (74% felt better about themselves), low rate of complications and sequelae (89% reported bleeding that lasted one day or less; scars were inconspicuous in 95%), short social downtime (95% returned to work in two to three weeks) and a reduction of frequency and intensity of headaches in 40% of those patients that suffered from them before the surgery. Concurrent rhytidectomy neither increased the complications rate or sequelae nor lengthened the social downtime. This is one of the few studies made so far on long-term satisfaction with the endoscopic brow lift. The finding of a correlation between the procedure and headache improvement is very interesting, as is the astonishing 93% patient satisfaction years after the surgery. However, objective measures for brow position improvement in the long-term and its relation with the subjective parameters (especially the reduction of headache frequency and intensity) are lacking and they would have added additional strength to the data and the conclusions presented.

Patient outcomes, satisfaction, and improvement in headaches after endoscopic brow-lift.
Panella NJ, Wallin JL, Goldman ND.
JAMA FACIAL PLASTIC SURGERY
2013;15(4):263-7.