Clinic offers for a brow lift often name one of two approaches: endoscopic or temporal. The short answer is that they differ in where the incisions go, which part of the brow they mainly work on, and how much research exists for each. The reviews below describe outcomes for each approach, but they do not settle which one suits a given face. That depends on your anatomy and is a question for a surgeon who examines you.

Key takeaways

  • An endoscopic brow lift uses small incisions within the hairline; a temporal lift uses an incision at the temple and is aimed mainly at the outer part of the brow.
  • A 2018 review found 34 studies with 7,273 patients on endoscopic lifts, against 10 smaller studies on temporal and lateral lifts.
  • A 2026 review of 15 studies reported lower complication rates with endoscopic than with open techniques, and said differences in study design limit that conclusion.
  • Most studies of either approach are retrospective case series, which describe outcomes but cannot show that one technique performs better.

Costs, length of stay and the other brow lift techniques (coronal and hairline) are covered in our main guide to brow lift in Turkey. This article only compares the two approaches.

Where do the incisions go?

Endoscopic. The American Society of Plastic Surgeons (ASPS) describes on its brow lift procedure page how some surgeons use an endoscope, a thin tube with a camera on the end, together with special instruments placed through small incisions within the hairline. Through these, the tissue and muscle beneath the skin can be adjusted. The brow then has to be held in its new position. A 2025 meta-analysis by Karanfilian and colleagues, described below, compared two of the fixation methods used for this: sutures and small implanted devices.

Temporal. A temporal (or lateral temporal) brow lift works through an incision at the temple. In a 2020 paper by Savetsky and Matarasso, the senior author describes his own version: an ellipse of skin 4 to 5 cm long is removed on each side, either within the hair-bearing scalp or, in patients with a wide forehead, at the hairline, and the tissue is lifted in the layer just under the skin. That is one surgeon’s technique. Other surgeons work in deeper layers or add other steps, so the label alone does not tell you exactly what will be done.

The name is not used consistently. A 2018 systematic review by Cho and colleagues grouped “temporal/lateral” lifts with the open techniques, and noted that each study had added its own modifications to the historical techniques. If an offer says “temporal”, ask where the incision is, how long it is, whether skin is removed, and which tissue layer the surgeon works in.

Which part of the brow does each approach target?

The temporal lift is aimed at the outer (lateral) part of the brow. Savetsky and Matarasso describe using it for a low outer brow, adding a separate lift of the inner brow through another approach when needed.

Studies of the endoscopic lift measure its effect at the inner, central and outer brow. A 2025 meta-analysis by Şibar and colleagues pooled 12 studies of endoscopic brow lifts with long-term follow-up. It reported average elevation of 3.25 mm at the inner brow, 3.86 mm at the center and 4.35 mm at the outer brow.

Reviews give no comparable pooled figure for temporal lifts, so the two cannot be compared in millimeters.

What do the reviews report about each approach?

The evidence is uneven. Most studies are retrospective case series from individual surgeons, which can describe outcomes but cannot show that one technique performs better than another.

How much research exists. The 2018 Cho review found 34 studies with 7,273 patients on endoscopic lifts. For temporal and lateral lifts it found 10 studies, part of an open-technique group of 37 studies and 2,858 patients.

Complications in the Cho review. For endoscopic lifts, the most common complications were hair loss near the incisions (2.8%), numbness (2%) and revision (1.2%), with asymmetry at 0.7%. For temporal and lateral lifts, the review reported asymmetry at 1.5%, hair loss at 1.5%, numbness at 0.3% and revision at 2.4% for the temporal studies. The authors wrote that endoscopic patients had lower complication rates than open brow lift patients. That comparison grouped all open techniques together rather than looking at temporal lifts alone, and for some measures, such as hair loss and numbness, the temporal figures above are lower than the endoscopic ones. The authors also listed the limits: studies reported different complications over different follow-up periods, techniques were not standardized, and the figures were not statistically matched or pooled in a meta-analysis.

The temporal lift literature. Savetsky and Matarasso reviewed 5 studies of the lateral subcutaneous technique. All were retrospective, and none was a randomized trial. The studies reported high satisfaction, with complication ranges of 0% to 8.5% for asymmetry and 0% to 7% for reoperation. Only one of the studies reported infection, at 0% to 11%. The authors add their own series of more than 500 cases, which also reported high satisfaction and few complications. A surgeon’s own series supports the technique in his hands; it does not compare it with other approaches.

Endoscopic versus open techniques. A 2026 systematic review by Alabdulkarim and colleagues included 15 studies, 4 of them randomized trials. It concluded that endoscopic and minimally invasive lifts seem to give cosmetically favorable results with lower complication rates than traditional open techniques. The authors also said that differences in outcome measures and study designs limit the strength of that conclusion, and that a meta-analysis was not possible. The review groups techniques differently from this article: its open group includes internal browpexy, done through the eyelid crease, and a frontotemporal lift, so its conclusion does not map directly onto endoscopic versus temporal. One trial it summarizes found more elevation with an endoscopic lift using an implanted fixation device than with an internal browpexy or eyelid surgery alone, but described the endoscopic approach as more invasive, with a longer recovery.

Fixation. A 2025 meta-analysis by Karanfilian and colleagues of 22 studies and 2,127 brows, with an average follow-up of 20.9 months, found that brow lifts overall raised the outer, central and inner brow by 3.8, 3.02 and 2.41 mm. Fixation with tined implants (small pronged devices) gave significantly more elevation at the outer brow than sutures, and also significantly more abnormal sensation (dysesthesia). Since fixation varies between surgeons, it is worth asking which method is planned.

What should you ask the surgeon?

  • Which approach do you propose for me, and why that one rather than the alternatives?
  • Where exactly will each incision be, how long, and will any skin be removed?
  • Will my hairline move?
  • Which part of my brow will change most: the inner, central or outer part?
  • How will the brow be held in place: sutures, an implanted device or another method? Will anything stay under the skin?
  • How many of these operations do you do each year, and can I see photos of patients with similar brows, taken at least several months after surgery?
  • What are the most common problems you see with this approach, and how would they be handled after I fly home?

Brow lifts are often planned together with eyelid surgery or another facial procedure; our article on combining a brow lift with rhinoplasty looks at one such combination. If your concern is a high forehead rather than a low brow, our guide to forehead reduction surgery covers that operation. When you look at a surgeon’s photos, our guide on how to judge before-and-after photos explains what to check.

Sources

All pages were opened and checked on 10 October 2026.