Subperiosteal Brow Lifts without Fixation

Abstract

Most surgeons today advocate an endoscopic subperiosteal brow lift for surgical correction of the upper third of the face. At the author's clinic, this operation has been performed since 1994 and the subgaleal bicoronal brow lift is no longer used. In earlier investigations, the author showed that the subperiosteal approach (n = 60) gives a better result than the subgaleal method (n = 60) when compared 1 year after surgery. In the literature, however, there are no published data regarding the long-term results of subperiosteal brow lifts. The author took material from his earlier investigations and looked at the same patients 5 years postoperatively. He compared the subperiosteal approach (n = 30) with the subgaleal brow lift (n = 15) and found that after 5 years the brows of the subgaleal patients were on the same level as they were before surgery, but in the group of subperiosteal brow lifts, almost all of the brows were higher 5 years after surgery than they were 1 year after surgery, with a mean increase in height of 2.5 mm. These findings led the author to the question whether scalp fixation was necessary at all when performing a subperiosteal brow lift. He performed 20 subperiosteal endoscopic brow lifts where scalp fixation was not used at all, relying only on changing the balance of muscle vectors around the eyebrows. Using a computerized instrument, measurements were made of the distance between the medial canthus and the top of the eyebrow, the midpupil and the top of the eyebrow, and the lateral canthus and the top of the eyebrow. All patients were measured before and 1 year after surgery. The author found an increase of the vertical height from the midpupil to the top of the brow, with an average increase of 3.9 mm. There were no differences between patients who had only a brow lift and those who had a brow lift and an upper blepharoplasty at the same time. The author concludes that for most cases where an increased vertical height of the brows of more than 4 mm is not needed, it is not necessary to use scalp fixation to achieve a natural result.