Μake us preferred on Google Shari Schmeltzer was ready to change her face. “Raising my brow would open my eyes, and once I saw that, I could never look at myself in the same way,” said Schmeltzer, a 55-year-old personal shopper at Bergdorf Goodman in New York.
But she wasn’t ready to undergo a coronal brow lift, an invasive procedure that involves making a sizable incision along the scalp and lifting all the skin on the forehead.
During a consultation with the New York plastic surgeon Dr. David Rosenberg, he suggested an alternative that involves smaller incisions and inserting a tiny camera into the body to identify precise areas to lift.
The treatment, an endoscopic brow lift, has become a more common nip-tuck among people seeking less-invasive versions of procedures enhancing areas like the forehead, nose and arms. Some are being sought in response to physical changes resulting from GLP-1-induced weight loss.
These lower-intervention alternatives all avoid general anesthesia. They promise to trade dramatic results for quicker, less painful recoveries. But each has drawbacks. Here’s a rundown.
The Endoscopic Brow Lift
Prepare to spend: $20,000–$40,000
Immediate recovery time: 10 days
The fine print: Can cause short-term itching in the scalp. Twice-a-year Botox injections may be required to maintain results.
Lifts—procedures designed to tighten and contour areas of the body—have ballooned in popularity in recent years, according to the American Society of Plastic Surgeons , which reported a 29% increase in brow lifts in 2025 compared with 2024.
Rosenberg has also witnessed the rise. “I have seen a 100% uptick in this procedure over the last three years,” he said of the endoscopic brow lift.
While the surgery has been around since the 1990s, advancements have made it newly popular. For one, “the number of incisions used has been reduced since it was introduced,” said Dr. Babak Azizzadeh, a facial plastic surgeon in Beverly Hills, Calif. At his practice, patients’ interest in endoscopic brow lifts has started to surpass the interest in eye lifts , procedures once mostly performed in middle age but now increasingly sought by younger people.
“All we talked about in 2025 was blepharoplasties,” Dr. Azizzadeh said, using the medical term for eye lifts. “But in 2026, patients started asking for the brow lift instead.”
The immediate recovery time for an endoscopic brow lift is about half that required for a coronal procedure. Schmeltzer was out and about within a week of hers and back at work within two weeks, she said. “People keep telling me I look like I did 10 years ago,” she added.
The Three-Step Arm Lift
Prepare to spend: $5,000–$10,0000
Immediate recovery time: 2 days
The fine print: Side effects can include some asymmetry of the arms.
Patients who lost weight on GLP-1s have recently come to Dr. Darren Smith, a plastic surgeon in New York, seeking to get rid of loose underarm skin.
For many people, the solution has been brachioplasty, the surgical procedure that cuts away excess flesh and tapers upper limbs. The number of procedures in 2025 increased by 21% year-over-year, according to the American Society of Plastic Surgeons.
But brachioplasty leaves a long, unsightly scar. To patients whose underarms are mildly or moderately sagging, Smith has been suggesting a minimally invasive, three-step alternative—one he does not recommend to those with significantly loose skin.
First, Smith melts fat and tightens deeper tissue using Vaser, an ultrasonic wand inserted into the arm via a small incision. Then he extracts fat cells using liposuction. The last step is contracting skin and stimulating collagen with BodyTite, a radio-frequency treatment in which a tiny probe is inserted into the arm. Recovery is typically a fraction of the time required for brachioplasty.
Karen Piazza, a 45-year old teacher in Brooklyn, paid $8,100 for the procedure, which left her with a small scar under each armpit. “There is a big change,” she said. “Now I will wear things that are sleeveless.”
The Liquid Nose Job
Prepare to spend: $1,000–$,2500
Immediate recovery time: On the spot
The fine print: Vision loss and skin necrosis are rare risks. Follow-up treatments may be necessary.
For decades, doctors have been surgically lifting the skin and often breaking nasal bones in order to create more symmetrical noses. Now, hyaluronic-acid filler is being injected as a nonsurgical alternative. The injections can be done during your lunch hour, while recovering from a conventional rhinoplasty can take weeks.
Using filler comes with risks that are rare but severe, said Dr. Deepak Dugar, a plastic surgeon in Beverly Hills. In .35% of patients, the injections can cause skin necrosis, the death of cells and body tissues, symptoms of which include pain, discoloration and loss of sensitivity. An even smaller percentage can experience vision loss as a result of nasal filler, Dugar added.
So far this year, Dugar has received about 40% more requests for liquid rhinoplasty compared with last year, he said. His patient Sheena Rao, a 44-year-old celebrity booker, paid $1,000 for injections to fill in a divot in the bridge of her nose and to give its tip a more upturned appearance.
“I’m Indian and wanted to keep my ethnic authenticity, and to avoid looking like I had a nose job,” she said. “The results were completely beyond what I thought could be done with injections.”
Dr. Benjamin Paul, a facial plastic surgeon in New York, had another word of caution about those considering a filler nose job. “Liquid adds, it doesn’t subtract, and every girl I’ve ever met wanted a smaller nose.”
