‘If This Is Real, You Screwed It’: Social Media Goes Wild Over TikTok Doctor’s ‘Scary’ Before-and-After Transformations of $50,000 Facelifts

A TikTok user claiming to be a plastic surgeon has sparked fierce online backlash after sharing wild before-and-after photos of $50,000 worth of facelifts.

The medic, known only as ‘Dr. Kim’, has more than 216,000 followers on TikTok, with their videos each receiving more than four million views.

Clips show typical-looking middle-aged people, followed by a video of their faces about a week after surgery, where the skin appears to have been pulled back very tightly.

Social media users have challenged the anonymous medic’s credentials and labeled the medic’s work ‘scary’ or ‘failed’.

Other surgeons have also questioned the report’s validity and techniques.

Although efforts have been made to track down Dr. Kim and link them to separate clinics in Shanghai and Seoul, their identities are still unknown.

Each of his videos shows a before-and-after photo of a patient’s procedures, usually facelifts and eyelid surgery such as epicanthoplasty and blepharoplasty – both of which aim to remove extra skin and bags around a patient’s eyes.

A facelift, which often costs more than $10,000, lifts the skin of the face and pulls it back, making the face look tighter and smoother.

In one video, which has been viewed 6.3 million times, a 46-year-old is depicted with wider eyelids, a straight face and chiseled jaw.

‘Dr. Kim, if this is real you screwed up,” one commenter wrote. A second said: ‘Enough, your license has been revoked.’

In a separate thread on Reddit discussing Dr. Kim’s work, someone wrote, “He created monsters.”

Another commented: ‘The surgeon is actually Doctor Frankenstein.’

However, others pointed out the short period between the before and after photos.

Patients’ faces have not yet fully healed and they are often still bruised or visibly swollen. One video shares the results just seven days after surgery.

According to the NHS, it can take two to four weeks to fully recover from a facelift.

Very minor swelling, bruising, tightness and numbness can take up to a year to persist, but these are usually only noticeable to those who go under the knife.

One Reddit user said: ‘Maybe wait until they’re healed before the pictures? Looks like he’s mutilating bodies.’

Dr. Daniel Barrett, a plastic surgeon in Beverly Hills with more than two million TikTok followers, said: “Everyone looks crazy seven to nine days after facial surgery, especially if you want to demonstrate any results.

“We don’t know what these people will look like in the long term. But I would like to know what techniques he uses to achieve these results.’

He added: ‘This is a radical change and it is important to know what happens in the long term.

“When you look at the before-and-after results, make sure you look four to six months or a year later to see if these results are long-lasting or not.”

Dr. Anthony Youn, a plastic surgeon in Michigan, US, said that some of Dr. Kim had ‘unnecessary plastic surgery’ and that some patients’ earlobes protruded and other patients looked as if they were 12 years old.

He said some had had an open brow lift – a brow lift in which an incision is made at the front of the hairline – a facelift, which involves pulling the skin up and back, and an upper and lower eyelid lift.

Dr. Youn cautioned that the open brown lift is not performed often because it leaves a large scar at the front of the hairline.

If these patients’ hairlines remain the same for life, the scar may remain hidden “a little,” but if the hairline recedes, the scar will be completely visible and a hair transplant would be the only way to hide it, he said.

Dr. However, Youn added that a clip from one of Dr. Kim reveals she looks ‘fantastic’ a month after surgery.

Popular types of facelifts include the so-called ‘liquid lifts’, which are achieved through a series of carefully positioned injections of Botox and facial fillers.

Skin tightening treatments that use lasers or light technology instead of surgical incisions have also skyrocketed in popularity.

More expensive thread lifts – which appear to be a possible technique used by Dr. Kim – involve inserting small soluble fibers containing acid under the skin, which are then stitched together, resulting in a tightening effect.

It comes as Marc Pacifico, chairman of the British Association of Aesthetic Plastic Surgeons, told MailOnline last month that the ‘transformative’ combined face and neck lift was one of the procedures likely to be in greatest demand in 2024.

He said interest in the surgery was mainly driven by social media, with people realizing how easy it was to spot a facelift on someone with an unadulterated neck.

“Without good, harmonious improvement to one’s neck, a facelift doesn’t look as good as it could and not as natural as it could,” he added.

“If you don’t have a good neck and a good face, we can tell right away that something is wrong,” he said.

‘If we want to achieve the very best result, and that is someone who doesn’t look like he’s had surgery, very natural, very fresh, with a nice jawline and a nice neck, then a more involved operation is needed.’

More involvement means more expensive, with Mr Pacifico saying a high-quality combined face and neck lift is likely to cost between £22,000 and £26,000.