Overview
Many facial cosmetic treatments exist, but few studies measure results from the patient's point of view. The FACE-Q is a patient-reported outcome tool with more than 40 separate scales and checklists. The authors describe how five new FACE-Q scales were developed and tested.
Findings
- Scales developed to international guidelines for patient-reported outcome tools.
- Scales tested: Psychological Wellbeing, Social Function, Satisfaction with Decision to Have Treatment, Satisfaction with Outcome of Treatment, Early Life Impact of Treatment; plus one checklist, Recovery Early Symptoms.
- 702 participants from three studies.
- The scales were reliable, valid and responsive to clinical change.
- Rasch analysis: overall chi-square p ≥ 0.06; Person Separation Index ≥ 0.81.
- Traditional analysis: Cronbach alpha ≥ 0.90.
- Responsiveness: significant improvement after facelift and lip treatment.
- Level of evidence: Diagnostic, III.
What it means for a patient
- The FACE-Q lets you rate your own result, your decision to have treatment, your well-being and your early recovery in a standard way.
- Scores improved significantly after facelift, which shows the scales can detect the change patients feel.
- Ask whether your surgeon uses the FACE-Q and can share scores from their patients.
- The abstract reports how well the scales measure. It does not report facelift results in detail.
Why this paper matters
It added validated scales to the FACE-Q for well-being, social function, satisfaction with decision and outcome, and early recovery. The authors state that the patient's view of cosmetic results should be measured and reported. Cited 246 times (NIH iCite, 2026-09-25).
Terms
- FACE-Q: a set of patient questionnaires for facial cosmetic treatments.
- Patient-reported outcome: a result reported directly by the patient.
- Psychometric evaluation: testing whether a questionnaire measures what it claims to, accurately and consistently.
- Reliability: whether a scale gives consistent results.
- Validity: whether a scale measures what it is meant to measure.
- Responsiveness: whether a scale detects real change after treatment.
- Rasch measurement theory: a statistical method for building and testing questionnaire scales.
- Cronbach alpha: a measure of how well questions in a scale agree with each other; 0.90 or higher is high.