McKeown Medical
167 Bath Street, Glasgow, G2 4SQ
Recognising the Signs of a Bad Facelift and How To Avoid Them
Published by Dr Darren McKeown
Date posted — 10.05.25
Facelift techniques have significantly advanced over recent years, providing impressive, natural-looking results when performed by skilled surgeons. However, concerns about unnatural outcomes or complications can leave potential patients feeling hesitant. Understanding the signs of a poorly executed facelift and knowing how to avoid them can help you confidently pursue your desired look.
What are the signs of a bad facelift?
Recognising the indicators of a poor facelift can help you avoid unsatisfactory outcomes or address them promptly if they occur:
- Stretched or overly tight skin: Placing too much tension on the tissues creates a tight, stretched or lumpy appearance that looks anything but natural.
- Pixie ears: Earlobes that appear to stick onto the face and are stretched or pulled downward.
- Displaced sideburns: Sideburns moved or eliminated due to improper incision placement. Katie Price is a good example of this, following her most recent facelift.
- Altered hairline: Incorrectly placed incisions can disrupt your natural hairline, moving it backwards, creating an unnaturally large temple and forehead.
- Highly visible scarring: Poor surgical technique resulting in obvious scars.
These issues typically arise from either inexperienced surgeons or surgeons who still use outdated surgical techniques.
Medical complications
Bad surgical techniques or inadequate aftercare can lead to significant health complications, including:
- Infection: Can be caused by improper sterilisation or poor aftercare.
- Haematoma: Blood collecting under the skin, leading to significant swelling and discomfort.
- Skin necrosis (dead tissue): Resulting from excessive tension or poor blood circulation.
- Nerve damage: Potentially causing muscle weakness.
How can a bad facelift be fixed?
If you’re experiencing issues following a facelift, revision surgery or other corrective treatments can help. An experienced surgeon will thoroughly assess your case, discuss your desired outcomes, and suggest the best approach. Treatments may include:
- Revision Surgery: Carefully correcting previous mistakes, repositioning tissues, or adjusting skin tension.
- Non-Surgical Treatments: Dermal fillers or Botox can help smooth irregularities or asymmetries when appropriate.
- Laser treatments: lasers can help to revise poor scars resulting from surgery.
A qualified surgeon will tailor treatments to your unique needs, helping you regain confidence in your appearance.
How to avoid getting a bad facelift?
Preventing disappointing results starts by choosing the right surgeon and preparing adequately. Some of my tips for avoiding a bad facelift include:
Choose a qualified surgeon
Always verify credentials, training, and experience.
Attend consultations
Use consultations to assess your potential surgeon’s approach, clarity, and care.
Review Before-and-After Photos
Evaluate real patient results to ensure the surgeon’s aesthetic aligns with your goals. Do not accept the excuse’ my patients don’t consent to sharing photographs’. Whilst it’s true that most patients do not consent to sharing their photos, most experienced surgeons will have at least a number of patients who do consent. If your surgeon doesn’t show you photos, it’s either because he’s not experienced enough yet to have the photos or he’s not confident you will like the look of his work.
Maintain open communication
Clearly communicate your expectations and concerns throughout your treatment journey, especially at the initial consultation. It’s better that your surgeon understands your expectations from the outset. An ethical surgeon will say no to surgery for you if they do not believe they can achieve your expectations.
Follow pre- and post-operative instructions
Adhering strictly to your surgeon’s guidance improves your outcome.
Manage your expectations
Understand realistic results, ensuring you and your surgeon share a clear vision.
Choose the right surgeon at McKeown Medical
At McKeown Medical, natural-looking, undetectable facelift results are our speciality. Our highly qualified and experienced team offers both surgical and non-surgical facelift treatments, including:
- Non-Surgical Facelift: A minimally invasive alternative offering rejuvenation without surgery.
- Volumetric Facelift: Restores youthful volume naturally.
- Deep Plane Face & Neck Lift: Delivers profound, natural rejuvenation by targeting deeper facial structures.
- Full Facelift: Comprehensive facial rejuvenation, addressing multiple signs of ageing.
We understand that excellent results start with expert care. Our team is dedicated to guiding you through each step, ensuring exceptional outcomes. Check out our gallery to see the transformative results we’ve achieved for our patients.
Book a consultation today to discuss our available treatment options and get advice on achieving the look you want.
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Arm lift is rapidly becoming one of our most popular procedures in the clinic. For more minor cases we can often achieve enough tightening simply with some liposuction and Quantum RF.
When patients have more skin excess, however, and want the tightest result possible you cannot beat a traditional brachioplasty, which is what this patient had with the very talented Dr Kavita. The patient is delighted with the result.
What do you think?
This is a little sneak peek of our upcoming podcast between Dr Darren (@drdarrenmckeown) and our new body contouring expert, Dr George Christopolous (@gchristopoulos). The full video will be going live later this week.
On a scale of 1-10, how excited are we for George to start his body contouring in Scotland?
Thank you to this lovely 67 year old patient who has allowed us to share the early results of her deep plane face and neck lift.
She’s just three weeks post her procedure which she had under local anaesthetic and sedation with the ever-talented @bramhallplasticsurgery here in the clinic, and while she’s still a little swollen around the jawline (where swelling tends to hang around the longest), we think she’s looking absolutely fabulous already.
The patient is delighted. What do you think?
I’m super excited to welcome Dr George Christopoulos to the dream team at McKeown Medical.
George is a plastic surgeon with a particular interest in body contouring: liposuction, tummy tucks, arm lifts and thigh lifts.
What I really love about George’s work is his approach to liposuction. It’s not about simply emptying out as much fat as possible. He approaches the body almost like a sculptor, thinking about shape, proportion, contours, highlights and shadows. It’s those details that can elevate a fairly standard liposuction result into something really special.
You can check out some of his work on his own page @gchristopoulos
I’ve also filmed a podcast with George where we get into all things body contouring — what makes a great liposuction result, loose skin, tummy tucks, lipoedema, technology and quite a lot more. I’ll be posting that over the next couple of days.
In the meantime, if you want to meet the man himself, George’s diary is now open for consultations at McKeown Medical.
What does filler look like? This!
So many people are terrified of fillers. When it’s done well, this is what it looks like. Everything looks softer. The bags under the eyes look less obvious. But nothing looks different.
The patient is delighted. What do you think?
IS THE QUANTUM LIFT A CUT-PRICE FACELIFT?
No, and here’s why.
A deep plane facelift goes deeper into the face, removing deep fat, muscle and salivary glands which is how you get those sharp neck contours. The Quantum Lift works more superficially, tightening skin and reshaping jowls in 90 minutes under local anaesthetic, but it can’t reach those deeper structures.
I believe in the Quantum Lift. I just won’t pretend it suits everyone.
Good aesthetic medicine means the right procedure for the right patient, not one treatment doing it all.
#QuantumLift #FaceliftAlternative #NonSurgicalFacelift #SkinTightening #AestheticMedicine MedicalAesthetics GlasgowAesthetics GlasgowClinic
Some more Quantum Lift magic!
This patient is just 24 hours after her Quantum lift with fat redistribution. As part of the procedure we sometimes take some of excess fat that’s been removed from the neck and jowls and replace it along the chin and jaw to create more definition.
Although she’s still bruised and swollen, I think we can all already see where this result is heading.
The patient is delighted! What do you think?
Here she is… the one we’ve all been waiting for!
Lorraine, our incredible Assistant Manager, was the very first patient to have The Quantum Lift.
She’s now approaching 12 weeks after her procedure - the point at which we really start to see the result mature - and she is absolutely over the moon with her new jawline.
It’s been especially exciting watching this result develop because Lorraine was patient number one and I think you’ll agree, she set the bar pretty high.
What do you think of her result?
This is not a facelift.
This patient is just one week after The Quantum Lift, immediately after having her tape removed - you can still see a little residual adhesive on her cheeks.
The Quantum Lift is our new minimally invasive approach to rejuvenating the lower face and neck. We first use precision liposuction to remove excess fat from beneath the chin and around the jowls, sculpting a cleaner jawline. We then use QuantumRF beneath the skin to contract and tighten the tissues of the lower face and neck.
What has impressed me most about QuantumRF is the degree of tissue contraction we can achieve. You can actually see the tissues tightening during the procedure itself, but that`s only the beginning. Most patients are through the main recovery within a week or two, while tightening and collagen remodelling continue for 3–6 months afterwards.
So, at only one week, this is still a very early result but she`s already delighted with the improvement.
No facelift. One week post-treatment. And plenty more improvement still to come.
What do you think?
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Our dedicated team of experts are on hand to help you as you navigate your journey with us.
When you first make contact with us you will be assigned your own personal Patient Relationship Manager. They’ll start by understanding your needs and liaising with our doctors to book you an appointment with the most suitable specialist. For any additional questions or needs, you can message or call them anytime and they’ll be delighted to assist you. Our entire team is dedicated to providing you with the best possible treatment and care tailored to your needs.
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