A patient told us today of her experience with the facelift under local anesthesia and it’s a story we have heard multiple times. So, I think it is important to share with our readers. In an effort to minimize cost, some doctors routinely recommend facelift under local anesthesia, meaning no IV and no general anesthesia.
In short, I would not recommend that to any family member, and as a result, I of course would not recommend it to our patients. The numbing medicine injections which are there for the procedure are at best annoying without any sedation and the cost of sedation is a fraction of that for the procedure itself, and is well worth it. Our goal is to give the best results possible and this simply requires attention to detail, which benefits from the addition of sedation. With IV sedation, our patients are very quickly very comfortable and do not remember the procedure, making it the best experience possible.
The patient that I saw today described a very uncomfortable experience at another office under local anesthesia (no sedation) and essentially would not recommend it. Perhaps the physician that she went to does not offer IV sedation because of cost or the need for accreditation, such as by the AAAHC, which can be costly for the office. We are proud to have two AAAHC accredited operating rooms in our office and feel that it is important to offer sedation to our patients.
