Procedure Description:

What Questions Should You Ask Your Facelift Surgeon?

Best outcomes come from informed decision-making, not luck. Patients would do well to ask a surgeon about technique, anesthesia and likely recovery before choosing him or her. And they should keep asking questions until they understood the answers.

Susan understood this better than most. For more than two years before she even made a consultation, she would watch surgeons’ YouTube videos, including Dr. Sadati. “I’ve watched so many of his videos that I wouldn’t be nervous,” she said at her consultation. She wasn’t necessarily right about that, but she knew she was well prepared. And she knew she could ask questions of Dr. Sadati at her consultation. She asked, for example, which technique he would use; how he would use anesthesia; and what kind of recovery she could expect.

In the end, she had a Deep Plane Facelift and Depp plan neck lift, a temporal brow lift, upper and lower blepharoplasty, lip lift and laser resurfacing. She was put under twilight anesthesia, not general. She followed our rapid recovery protocol including Hyperbaric Oxygen therapy, Light Therapy, IV vitamin therapy. She had more than one surgery but essentially one easy recovery.

What value is there in asking questions?

A good surgeon should be able to take a patient through the preoperative, intraoperative and postoperative phases of care. He should not stumble over the questions and should not leave them unanswered. And if at the end of a consultation questions remain unanswered, that would be fair game to point out.

Susan’s story is worth remembering for every patient considering surgery. Ask your surgeon about technique, anesthesia and recovery. And ask him or her to answer your questions before you agree to go forward.