Background: Twenty grading scales have been developed to assess age-related facial changes. Until now, the validity with regard to the patient's actual age and the clinical importance of combined measurement tools to describe facial aging was unclear.
Objective: To investigate the reliability and validity of a total face score and three global face assessment scales for estimated age, estimated aesthetic treatment effort, and signs of aging in the facial units.
Materials and methods: Descriptive, reliability, correlation, and principal component analyses based on the assessment of 50 subjects by 12 raters using the 20 grading scales and the global face assessment scales.
Results: Inter- and intrarater reliability was high for the total face score and for the scales on estimated age and aesthetic treatment effort. Actual age was highly correlated with these three measures. Facial aging was indicated particularly by scales of the lower face.
Conclusion: The aesthetic grading scales and global scales on estimated age and aesthetic treatment effort are reliable and valid instruments. The results suggest that a more-comprehensive evaluation of the human face and its age-related changes can help to identify important areas of facial aging and to define optimal aesthetic treatment strategies.
© 2012 by the American Society for Dermatologic Surgery, Inc. Published by Wiley Periodicals, Inc.