How effective are endoscopic face-lifts?

Certainly if very expensive, high-tech equipment is used during a surgical procedure, it must be a better procedure. That's what some patients and even some plastic surgeons count on. The endoscope, a tube with a camera on its end, allows surgery through small incisions. The whole concept of "minimal incision surgery" depends on the endoscope. In abdominal and gynecologic surgery, scope procedures have become the preferred method in many cases. In plastic surgery, though, the endoscope is a machine searching for a reason for existence.

Consider the face-lift. The very reason for the operation is to remove the extra tissue in the neck. The only way to remove skin is to make big incisions and snip it out. Any seamstress knows that the only way to make a dress smaller is to cut out material and create a seam. It's the same with a face-lift. The use of tiny incisions in this operation is therefore oxymoronic, or mutually exclusive. And proving that endoscopes are not needed in plastic surgery, procedures with small incisions that were originally developed for the scope are being retooled into short incision procedures without the endoscope!