Murad Alam, MD, MSCI

Raters perceived recipients to look younger but not necessarily more attractive.

Patients choose facial cosmetic surgery to look younger and more attractive. Until now, there has been little available data to demonstrate that this objective is being met. To measure the degree of perceived age change and improved attractiveness following aesthetic facial surgical procedures, these authors had observers blinded to the study objective assess before and after photographs of 49 patients who underwent facial cosmetic surgery at a single cosmetic surgery practice.

Four photographs of each patient, including before and after frontal and right lateral views, were selected for analysis. Fifty blinded raters assessed 49 pairs of photographs each. Raters saw either before or after photographs of each patient. The raters scored each photograph on a scale of attractiveness (1 = lowest, 10 = highest) and also estimated the chronologic age of each patient. On average, raters estimated the patients in the after photographs to be 3.1 years younger than their chronological age, a significant difference. However, attractiveness scores were not significantly different in the before and after groups.

Citation(s):

Zimm AJ et al. Objective assessment of perceived age reversal and improvement in attractiveness after aging face surgery. JAMA Facial Plast Surg 2013 Aug 1; [e-pub ahead of print].