Lifestyle Lift Information
What Does The Lifestyle Lift Do?
Who Performs the Lifestyle Lift
Where Is The Lifestyle Lift Performed?
Lifestyle Lift "Freepress Review"
Information From LifestyleLift.com
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How does the Lifestyle Lift differ from other face lifts and cosmetic procedures?
Free Press Review
Face-Lift to go: Patients like DJ Lori Rigato are opting for an inexpensive procedure that lasts less than an hour and promises little disruption of there everyday lives
BY PATRICIA ANSTETT
FREE PRESS MEDICAL WRITER
Her morning traffic report done, country radio disc jockey Lori Rigato told WYCD-FM (99.5) listeners the real news of the morning. She was having a face-lift. Updates in one hour, she promised.
With cameras rolling, Rigato underwent a minimally invasive procedure patented as the Lifestyle Lift by Dr. David Kent; it took place at his Troy office.
The procedure takes about 45 minutes, uses only local anesthesia around both ears and allows patients to return to normal activities the next day, as Rigato did. It usually doesn't result in the bruising that typically remains for a week or more after a conventional face-lift. It's one of more than half a dozen approaches giving the face-lift a face-lift of its own.
Doctors all over the United States are trying new procedures to get lasting, natural results with fewer bruises, less anesthesia and smaller stitches. The trend is toward procedures that take one hour or less, prompting the expression "lunchtime lift." Rigato's procedure was at 7 a.m. That made hers a breakfast lift.
"I looked in the mirror and saw this saggy thing," she says, pointing to a small flap of skin under her neck.
Rigato is tall, blond and trim and appears years younger than her 47 years. The word varsity is stitched across the back of her designer sweatpants. Asked whether she is single or married, she sings "sing-le."
She is the latest of several Detroit radio DJs, including WOMC-FM's (104.3) Dana Mills, to undergo Kent's Lifestyle Lift.
Rigato received a large discount on the procedure in exchange for doing promotions on her station and on Kent's Web site: www.lifestylelift.com. Kent has set up Lifestyle Lift centers in 11 U.S. cities -- all, for now, on the East coast and in the South or Midwest. Another five are expected to open by year's end.
A Lifestyle Lift costs less than one-third the price of traditional surgery, which costs up to $15,000, depending on the amount of surgery. Kent, like many of the doctors working for him, is an otolaryngologist -- an ear, nose and throat specialist who had several years of additional training in facial plastic surgery. His certification is through the American Osteopathic Association's Board of Ophthalmology/Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery.
The entry of other specialists into the plastic surgery domain is one of the big changes in the field, though many consumers aren't aware of it, even as the business is booming.
The face-lift is the fifth-most-common plastic surgical procedure in the United States. In 2004, 157,061 Americans got face-lifts, according to the American Society of Aesthetic Plastic Surgery.
Increasingly, cheek implants, liposuction, collagen injections and brow, eyelid and forehead lifts are combined with a face-lift to remove fat in the neck or restore fullness in the cheeks. The more extensive the procedure, the greater the time, skill and cost. Some women aren't willing to go that far. Safety is one issue.
Last year's anesthesia-related deaths of two women undergoing face-lifts in New York scared off some women from more extensive procedures, Kent says.
One option drawing attention is a one-hour procedure called the Feather Lift. It uses barbed sutures --surgical thread knotted like barbed wire -- to lift the underlying tissue. It is performed with local anesthesia. At the plastic surgery meeting, doctors disagreed about whether the procedure is effective, particularly in tightening loose neck tissue, the so-called turkey neck.
"We don't have the same answer for the Feather Lift, the Lifestyle Lift and other techniques," she says.
Surgery Varies By Patient
The Lifestyle Lift uses small incisions in front and under each ear, sometimes into the hairline, to lift the underlying muscle. There's no one approach. It varies with the patient, Kent says. Typically, two to five stitches in the cheek and jaw line to lift the underlying muscles are used.
It's not intended to address excessive neck fat; that's better addressed by adding liposuction or some other technique to eliminate the so-called turkey neck. Some 60,000 Lifestyle Lift procedures have been done, all without complications or deaths, Kent says.
It has four basic steps. The surgeon makes incisions around the ear so that the skin is freed from the ear.
Next, the doctor uses surgical thread to pull up and tighten the underlying muscle. Then comes the trimming of any excess skin around the ear. In the final stage, the patient is stitched up, leaving more than a dozen stitches around the ear that are removed within 10 days.
The internal stitches are left in place. Three months later, she's still happy with her results. "I love it," Rigato said late last week. "Nobody really notices it, which is what you want," Rigato says. "It's just enough, not a severe look." She says that although she couldn't wear her hair up for three weeks, the scars are almost unnoticeable now. The nerves on the side of her face are feeling normal again, too.
Board-certified facial plastic surgeon Dr. Jeffrey Colton, who works with Kent in Troy, describes the Lifestyle Lift as a good operation that delivers the results most women want. "The trend is for less," he says. "If people are willing to accept less than 100% improvement, not that that ever is possible, this may be what they want because it's a very expedient procedure. It isn't the end-all, be-all operation for all people. We can give you 70% to 80 % of what you can get in the other deal."
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