A Lift at Lunchtime?
Shortly after 7 a.m. one recent morning, Annette Padussis winced as Baltimore plastic surgeon Ricardo Rodriguez injected her face with an anesthetic in preparation for a "thread lift," a new cosmetic procedure touted as a less drastic alternative to a face-lift.
An hour later the 54-year-old Towson pharmacist was in her car, headed for a full day at work. Flesh-colored bandages covered bruises caused by the clear sutures, or threads, that Rodriguez had snaked underneath the skin beside her chin and around her mouth to hoist and anchor sagging tissue.
A week later, after the bandages were removed and the swelling subsided, Padussis was delighted by what she didn't see: Her small jowls were gone and what plastic surgeons call "marionette" lines running from the side of her nose to the corner of her mouth had been smoothed.
"I look about eight or 10 years younger," she said. "The whole thing was such a great experience that I'm going back to have my neck done in February."
In the eternal quest for cosmetic enhancements that promise speedy recovery and instant results, the thread lift -- also known as the feather lift, lunchtime lift or suspension lift -- has emerged as one of the most requested new fixes. The minimally invasive procedure, which usually takes about an hour and typically costs $3,000 to $4,000, is performed in a doctor's office under local anesthesia. The time and cost of the procedure vary in part according to the number of threads used.
A typical face-lift, by contrast, takes about four hours, is performed under general anesthesia, costs $8,000 to $15,000 and requires weeks of recovery. Unlike a face-lift, a thread lift is reversible.
The apparent ease of a thread lift and its promise to subtly "refresh" a sagging middle-aged face without weeks of downtime, has made it especially popular with baby boomers leery of the pop-eyed, taut-skinned appearance commonly associated with a face-lift, which removes excess skin.
"I didn't want that deer-in-the-headlights look, or anything radical," said Douglas L. Kohler, 44, a Northern Virginia advertising executive who was back at work the morning after undergoing an afternoon thread lift in the office of Washington plastic surgeon Paul G. Ruff.
In the past eight months, the lift has been performed on the "Today" show, "Oprah" and "Good Morning America" as well as on local television stations around the country. More than 9,000 procedures have been performed using Contour Threads, which were approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in 2004. Thousands of other procedures have been performed using another brand known as Aptos sutures.
While Rodriguez is enthusiastic about the procedure, other plastic surgeons characterize thread lifts as the latest expensive fad. They say the procedure has not been adequately studied and is being performed by too many doctors who lack the necessary skills. Some of these physicians, critics say, operate on patients after taking a one-day course -- sometimes with unfortunate results.
Safe and Effective?
Even in the deft hands of a board-certified plastic surgeon, there can be complications: threads that bunch up, break or protrude through the skin. In some cases the nondissolving sutures, which are made of polypropylene and have tiny barbs similar to a fishhook, can be felt or seen.
Then there are the results. Some detractors say that once the swelling disappears, so does the younger look.
"It's hard to tell which are the before and after pictures," said Michael J. Olding, chief of plastic surgery at George Washington University Medical Center, who does not perform thread lifts. "The optimal patient is someone who doesn't need anything done."
New York plastic surgeon Robert W. Bernard calls the results "underwhelming."<
Ricardo L. Rodriguez, M.D. offers breast augmentation surgery in:
