What’s moving in? The newest advance in non-invasive tightening. What’s moving out? Surgery.
At this year’s American Society of Laser Surgery and Medicine meeting, the big news was Ultherapy™ for skin tightening and lifting. Ultherapy is micro-focused ultrasound, the same safe ultrasound used to image babies or varicose veins, but the difference is that this ultrasound is focused. Imagine two microscopically small headlights aimed at each other. When the two paths cross, energy is produced. This is where tightening occurs. Now, imagine hundreds of invisible-to-the-eye micro-focused droplets of energy below the skin surface. The energy tightens skin, without the need to cut it. Now you have Ultherapy.
But that’s just the beginning. Ultherapy opens up new possibilities because energy can be focused shallower or deeper and the energy settings can be adjusted (for example, adjusted for the thinner skin above the brows to restore a natural-looking arch or adjusted to lift and tighten the skin under the chin or on the neck, cheek and jowl). That alone is pretty exciting. But there’s more! With Ultherapy treatments in Portland, we are able for the first time to actually tighten the underlying collagen of the SMAS layer. In the past, this collagen layer could only be addressed with a surgical facelift for Portland, Oregon patients.
Let’s talk about treatment. What can you expect? First, we need to develop a treatment plan. Do we want to use Ultherapy alone? Or would it be more effective to combine Ultherapy with other treatment possibilities? For example, today I talked about using lasers to dissolve fat under the chin (laser lipolysis and microlipoaspiration) and combining the laser treatment with Ultherapy for the temples, forehead, cheeks, jowls and chin/neck to tighten skin and shape the neck. It’s a matter of combining art and science together for amazing, lifted results.
At my practice, we have a very clear philosophy: we need to make the treatment fit you, not the other way around.
Ultherapy is a relatively comfortable procedure. We work with our patients on a “1 to 10″ grading scale, keeping discomfort between a “2″ (”I could do this all day long”) and a “3″ (”That’s a bit warm”). We use oral ibuprofen, injectable ibuprofen (called Toradol), or propoxyphene (Darvon), as well as a numbing cream before treatment. Treatments focus on lines of invisible microdots of energy that flow into the skin from the ultrasound transducer, which is applied gently to your skin through cool ultrasound gel.
During the Ultherapy procedure, we’ll treat half of your face, then stop and take a look. The immediate visible change is impressive to everyone – you included – and will continue to improve month-by-month, building over 4 to 6 months. There may be some limited swelling after treatment, but you can still expect to return to work the next day. Although uncommon, bruising can occur but will disappear over the course of a week. Some patients have experienced some soreness, but this will also disappear gradually over several weeks.
The images of improvement with Ultherapy, as shown in presentation after presentation, were impressive with even just a single treatment session, but even more so with a second treatment 4 months later. So think of how much collagen-building and skin-smoothing improvement can be achieved through 1, 2, or even 3 treatment sessions!
I’m not saying that Ultherapy means Thermage®, Accent™ XL or YAG lasers are “out.” What I am trying to say is that we can now add to those treatments, for even better improvement.
Tags: facelift portland oregon, portland face lift
