Evaluating the Quality of a Cleft-Lift Procedure

 

Not all clefts lifts are created equal! 

This is a patient who came to me after having surgery elsewhere. He had a cleft-lift, but because it was poorly constructed, he had a poor outcome:
Here is an example of one of my patients, who had a cleft lift with an excellent result:

This patient had no post op problems, and has been well healed for over a year at the time of this writing.

Here are images of a recent patient who came to see us a few weeks after a cleft-lift which came apart almost immediately after surgery:

Left: pre op. Center: Immediately post op. Right: six weeks post op

After revision, the wound has healed very nicely and remained intact.


So, I hope you can see that there is quite a bit of variation from one surgeon to another regarding what is called a “cleft-lift” and how it is constructed.