But after watching the "Today" segment, she decided to have a thread lift.

The thread lift may turn out to be exactly the same, a good technique in evolution that will find its place."

Not all thread lifts work out like Ms. Frye's, however.

A thread lift involves no transplanting of tissue, so recovery can take as little as a week.

The "Oprah" show reran the original thread lift episode last August.

"Maybe the thread lift will turn out to be O.K. for somebody looking for short-term results," he said.

"The thread lift reminds me of liposuction," Dr. Reed said.

With the soft thread lift, a needle is used to pull filaments under the skin of the face to tighten the neck and jawline.

Dr. Ruff, who has performed about 110 thread lifts in the last year, said he expects the best ones to last five years.

What are the advantages of the SLUPLift and why not do a "thread lift" instead?

Specific complications of the thread lift include puckering skin, the visibility of the threads and the appearance of lumps.

But the thread lift has come under fire from many plastic surgeons and facial surgeons, the kind of doctors who perform most of the traditional face-lifts.

Another variation is the thread lift, in which a square stitch is placed from one nostril to the other and down to the peaks of the Cupid's bow.

Thirty of 51 plastic surgeons Dr. Young polled at the society's annual meeting in April said they thought thread lifts created more problems than benefits, he said.

Only a few years old, the thread lift is one of the fastest-growing cosmetic procedures in the United States, thanks in part to the exposure it has received on television.

"I can get them better and longer-lasting results at one-third the cost using just Botox and Restylane," said Dr. Boswell, who has stopped offering thread lifts.

The thread lift became popular quickly because patients like the idea of a procedure that does not require large incisions and long recovery, said Dr. Trevor Born, a plastic surgeon in Toronto.

Risks of thread lift procedures include thread migration, which may cause an imbalanced facial appearance without further treatment, threads becoming dislodged during sleep, and bunching of excess skin," states Dr. Slupchynskyj.

"One cough and a sneeze, and the thread lift is all over," said Dr. Robert C. Silich, a plastic surgeon in Manhattan who has removed sutures from several patients operated on by other doctors.

The thread lift or feather lift is a less invasive surgical option, which is often used for people who seek minor improvements to treat sagging or laxity in the eye, forehead, and nasolabial fold areas.

The barbed suture lift, nicknamed the thread lift, is a quick outpatient procedure in which doctors thread serrated plastic sutures through the fatty layer beneath the face and use them to hoist sagging tissue.

In 2004 "The Oprah Winfrey Show" gave the first major television exposure to the facial thread lift, in which threads made of surgical suture material are embedded in the face and used to hoist lax tissue.

Some of them charge that the thread lift has not yet been subjected to the kind of peer-review clinical studies that they say are needed to demonstrate that it is safe and effective and to indicate which patients it is right for.

She started Botox and Restylane injections to zap wrinkles at 40 and two years ago had a thread lift, a less-invasive variation on a face-lift in which surgeons insert sutures into the tissue around the eyes, cheeks or neck, then pull them tight and anchor them with a series of tiny hooks.

She approaches the task with such confidence in the product, such keen appreciation for its patented "feather lift" mechanism.

The thread lift or feather lift is a less invasive surgical option, which is often used for people who seek minor improvements to treat sagging or laxity in the eye, forehead, and nasolabial fold areas.

The featherlift reached the top, setting Naltecona on the platform with the airy smoothness of pluma.