“It’s not just the rich, they’re just ordinary people” — demand for full facelifts has risen since the pandemic, a study shows

According to one of the country’s leading cosmetic surgeons, there has been a significant increase in demand for full facelifts in Ireland since the pandemic broke out.

Ormac Joyce, who works full-time as a cosmetic surgeon, conducted the research alongside fellow surgeon Conor Sugrue on behalf of the Irish Association of Plastic Surgeons (IAPS). The study is the first of its kind in Ireland.​

According to the study, 89 full facelifts were performed across Ireland in 2019. That number skyrocketed in 2022, with Mr. Joyce personally performing 223 full facelifts in the past year alone.

Speaking of Sunday independent He said this weekend, “The goal of our 2019 study was to find the number of facelifts performed by plastic surgeons in the subject registry here so we can get a much clearer picture of what’s happening.”

The data was collected by contacting the private secretaries of facelift surgeons as well as operations directors in private hospitals, who store the performed number on their logs.

“We found that there are 18 private hospitals and clinics in Ireland, but only seven plastic surgeons performed all 89 facelifts in 2019,” he said.

Mr. Joyce, whose practice currently has a four-month waiting list, attributes the boom to advances in medicine that allow the procedure to be performed under local anesthesia.

About 90 per cent of surgeons in Ireland and the UK perform facelifts under general anesthesia (GA), which involves inserting a tube into a patient’s airway. It’s low risk, but poses more risks in the over-60s, the average age group of those undergoing the procedure.

As of 2019, Mr Joyce has become the first cosmetic surgeon in Ireland to perform full facelifts under local anaesthetic. In contrast to conventional facelifts, the patient remains fully awake and no longer has to stay in the hospital overnight.

“Given the demand, I could do twice as many facelifts as I am currently doing,” he said.

“Fortunately, I am able to turn down clients. I never “up-sell” so I turn most women in their forties away. My average patient is in their 60s.

“There is a lot of nonsense about facelifts. Non-surgeons often use the term “liquid facelift,” meaning fillers and botox — but a true and genuine facelift involves surgically removing the sagging skin. It also addresses the muscle layer.

“My procedure is just a local anesthetic – like at the dentist. We offer patients a mild dose of Valium or Xanax and they are fully awake. Some nod off. chat something Some won’t stop chatting.

“You can go home straight away with no drains, bulky bandages, sutures coming out and less swelling. The procedure takes between two and a half and four hours and on average the woman is ‘restaurant ready’ in a week.”

Mr. Joyce also attributes the increasing demand for facelifts to the so-called “zoom boom”.

“People look at their reflections a lot more, they do a lot more video calls and so everyone sees their face more,” he said.

Of his clients’ profiles who book the procedure, 2 per cent are men, while 60 per cent are from outside Dublin. His oldest patient was a 92-year-old woman.

The market for facelifts in Ireland is “very secretive”.

​“Some wives don’t tell their husbands. I had a wife last week who told her husband that she had dental work. Some tell their friends, some are guinea pigs for their friends — and sometimes you find they’re all there when you make it.

“I got three sisters last week. The mothers of a groom or a bride also make up a large proportion of customers.”

Mr Joyce, who trained at the Bella Vou Cosmetic Plastic Surgery Clinic in Tunbridge Wells, England, has also noticed a different attitude among Irish clientele.

“The Irish are adamant that they don’t want to be drawn like Nancy Reagan or Joan Rivers. They just want a “refreshed” look. The goal is for friends to say, ‘You look great’ – but then they can’t exactly pinpoint why.”

He dismissed the notion that patients were predominantly wealthy, describing them as “ordinary people”.

“In the beginning I often book video calls with patients and one was a 61-year-old farmer from Cork. He shows up on screen in a field with a dirty face and has been booked for a facelift. I asked him what his wife thought about it and he looked at me like I had 10 heads and said, ‘She made the appointment’.”

After a holiday break, he expects to be full throttle again in a few days: “People want to be ready by Christmas, then I have a break from December 16th. Appointments are canceled again.”

According to the International Society of Aesthetic Plastic Surgeons (ISAPS), the number of facelifts in the UK in 2019 was 7,377. In the UK there were 1,077 fully qualified plastic surgeons in 2019, while Ireland had around 50.

The population of the United Kingdom was 66.84 million in 2019, meaning one person in 9,060 there had a facelift. The Irish population was 4.93 million in 2019 and Mr Joyce’s figures showed one in 55,438 people had a facelift.