Pain after surgery is an understandable and common fear, particularly in cosmetic plastic surgery where the decision to have it done is completely elective. Facelift surgery, in particular, has a popular perception that it will be very painful after the operation. After all, it is an extensive surgery on your face. How could it not be very painful after?
I am happy to report that exactly the opposite is true. Facelift surgery actually has a remarkable absence of much discomfort at all. Other than the first night, where a bulky head dressing is used to prevent any potential bleeding which is a bit uncomfortable and a little claustrophobic for some, there is virtually no pain. The only significant discomfort issue that I hear from patients is the pressure on their ears from the head dressing from the first night after surgery. Once this is removed the next day, the ear discomfort becomes much more mild. Some ear tenderness will exist for a week or so to the touch, but the rest of the face and neck is virtually pain-free!
How can this be so? Because a facelift requires the skin to be lifted up from the underlying tissues, it completely cuts across the many tiny skin nerves which provide feeling to the skin. As a result, normal feeling sensations in the skin (such as pain) are eliminated. While these skin nerves will grow back, there will be numbness in all of the skin that was released and lifted during your facelift. In essence, rather than pain you will have numbness. This numbness will persist for several months but gradually the feeling returns and works its way back to normal from the center of the face back towards the ears.
While facelift surgery can seem scary, a concern about pain or a long period of discomfort after surgery should not be one of them.
Dr. Barry Eppley
Indianapolis, Indiana