Choosing the right surgeon for facelift surgery is a very personal experience. Here are the three things we think are most important to consider when looking for your facelift surgeon.
Rapport – do you like your surgeon?
Of course, skill and breadth of experience are critical, but we should not underestimate the value of rapport. Whilst you’re looking for a great surgeon, not a new best friend, it’s important you feel comfortable with the person who is going to carry out your procedure. You need to get a sense that they understand you and what you want to achieve from the procedure – this is what will give you confidence and reassurance to know you’re taking the right step.
In our practice, we focus during our initial consultation on understanding your motivations for plastic surgery and seek to gain a shared vision of the end results you’d like to achieve. As a small, specialist practice run by the surgical team rather than a large business with a team of surgeons to keep busy, we have no interest whatsoever in encouraging you to have plastic surgery.
Instead, we want to provide you with the information you need to make an informed decision about whether facelift surgery is right for you. That means giving you the time you need to ask questions and find out about the procedure, and our surgeons asking you lots of questions so they can truly stand in your shoes.
All of our patients appreciate this approach, and because it’s all done in an unhurried way, you get to know your surgeon and they get to know you, which leads to better outcomes for both parties. It’s very satisfying, of course, to enhance patients’ lives by helping them look and feel their best. And it’s a positive experience for you if you can recover from surgery and go back out into the world with your head held high, full of confidence and optimism for the future.
Experience and specialism – has your surgeon got a good track record?
Don’t be afraid to ask your surgeon about their breadth and depth of experience. Explore how long your surgeon has been in practice. Ask them where they trained, it can even be helpful to know why they were motivated to choose to specialise in plastic surgery.
Ask them about the variety of work they have done – ideally, you want to choose someone who understands the complexity and has performed facelifts on people of a range of ages with different facial rejuvenation requirements.
Ask your surgeon how many of these procedures they’ve carried out. Level of complexity and breadth of experience counts – different ages of clients with different extents of facial rejuvenation requirements.
This background picture helps you understand the professional you are working with – any good surgeon will be happy to share this information with you, and you shouldn’t feel awkward about asking these questions.
Location – how accessible is your surgeon?
Before the global pandemic, plastic surgery tourism was a big industry, with many people opting to travel overseas for cheaper surgery. We have always warned about the dangers of going abroad for surgery, not least because different countries have less rigorous standards than we do here in the UK but also because it’s more difficult to get the support you need if things go wrong.
By choosing a surgical practice you can more easily visit, you’ll be able to attend your pre- and post-surgery appointments more easily and, in the unlikely event of an issue arising, you can easily return for support.
It’s not unusual for patients to travel many miles to visit Manchester Plastic Surgery. We’re easy to get to, we are well served by road, rail and air.
