Face lifting & Skin Tightening
Anti-aging, skin tightening & face-lifting are different names that express the patient continuous struggle to reverse the effect of gravity on skin. In simpler words... everyone wants young firm skin.
While no single technology can fix all problems, all technologies tend to excel in treating one or two conditions & slightly improve the rest… you may need to prioritize the most potential conditions for your practice from the upcoming ones.
The selection of a skin tightening technology is based on 3 factors:
- Severity of the condition: from fine lines through wrinkles up to skin sagging.
- Depth of target: Epidermis, dermis or SMAS layer.
- The desired outcome: lifting, volumization or resurfacing.
Skin loses its elasticity with the decrease of elastin & collagen production, a drop in the production may happen due to various reasons like aging, smoking, sun exposure.
Tightening effect is achieved by technologies like High Intensity Precision RF (HIPR), micro-needling Radio Frequency & High intensity Focused Ultrasound (HIFU) through thermal shrinking of old collagen in dermis which triggers skin reaction to form new collagen. The newly formed collagen will restore the skin volume, stretch the skin & hence reduces wrinkles & fine lines.
HIPR excels in skin volumization through its ability to precisely maintain the temperature within the range required for triggering mass collagen & elastin rebuilding. HIFU technology provides an additional lifting effect through targeting & shrinking the SMAS layer located below the dermis which connects skin to muscles, the shrinking effect leads to lifting the tissues and the connected muscle fibers.
Another approach can be used in mild cases like fine lines by using fractional lasers, these lasers ablates microscopic parts of skin which provides a resurfacing effect.
Skin loses volume significantly in some cases like aging & weight loss, the loss in volume results in further aggravation of wrinkles.
In severe conditions, the only solution is surgery while in mild to moderate cases it is advised to decrease the amount of excessive skin by ablation using resurfacing technologies like fractional CO2 or fractional Er:YAG. After completing the resurfacing program a skin tightening regimen can be started using HIFU or RF program to further tighten the loose skin.
