2/11/08

The eyebrows of the average endoscopic periosteal brow lift patient kept rising during the 2 years afterward, according to a study published this month in the journal Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery.

Eyebrows tend to droop with age (ptosis is the fancy term for sag). Cosmetic surgeons can fix this, more or less, with a lift that also reduces forehead wrinkles and frown lines.

In one group of patients, the procedure itself raised the brow by about 3 millimeters (a little more than a tenth of an inch). In a separate group, the authors found that, between 4 months after surgery and roughly 2 years after surgery, the eyebrows went up another 2 millimeters or so.

“Nowadays, we are trying to not raise the medial part of the eyebrow so much, in order to avoid an overcorrection,” says study author Andre R.D. Tolazzi, MDa, who is with the Department of Surgery, Hospital N.S. Graças, and Hospital de Clın, Curitiba, Brazil. The medial part of the eyebrow seems to undergo more of a long-term lift than other parts of the eyebrow, he claims.

A discussion published along with the study notes that the effect is “relatively subtle for most patients.”

Furthermore, the discussion notes that the study isn’t conclusive. For example, it was limited to 72 patients initially, with 2-year follow-up in only 24 patients.