Are you or someone you love troubled by a sagging face or neckline?
Patients often ask me about alternatives to expensive facelift procedures. Aside for the hospital charges, many people just cannot afford weeks of downtime to look like themselves again.
What if there was an alternative for lasting jawline definition, and volume reduction that was safe, proven and effective and could be completed in a single treatment? What if the downtime was only a few days instead of several weeks? What if it could be performed in the office rather than the hospital? What if it were less expensive?
Enter the “mini-facelift”
Initially the term mini-facelift referred only to using long sutures to “thread” and lift ones facial tissues under the skin and upwards to be anchored to the scalp. But this technique produced no reduction in fat volume, and did not always address all layers of skin laxity. Now, recent advances combining liposuction with new heat technologies that achieve excellent lasting skin contraction (all without a scalpel) are being touted as this generation’s mini facelift.
With price points well below the cost of a traditional facelift, and recovery times that average three days or less at home, more and more savvy consumers are choosing this new combo liposuction/skin tightening mini facelift option.
Liposuction can be performed without skin tightening, but liposuction alone can only reduce volume; without skin contraction, patients remain saggy at the jawline and will appear wrinkly. To address this problem, many aesthetic surgeons can now tighten necks and the lower face with heat energy applied at the same time as the liposuction. This heat energy must be carefully applied. Too little heat energy and the three layers under the surface needing contraction (dermis, subdermal matrix and deep fat layers) will remain loose. Too much heat energy, and the three layers could be burned, or even scarred. To control heat energy precisely, some new technologies combine microneedling with “Radiofrequency Assisted Lipo-Coagulation” (RFAL). The radiofrequency heat is delivered through the microneedle pins themselves. Or the aesthetic surgeon may use special electric tunneling cannulas to “inject” radiofrequency heat precisely under the skin immediately prior to liposuction. When properly monitored and applied, aesthetic surgeons and their patients are seeing remarkable skin tightening with heat energy, even up to 50% reductions in jawline skin laxity.
Three years ago, a person may have needed to fly to Toronto to have such a novel procedure performed. But now the mini facelift is quickly becoming available at more and more locations closer to home across Colorado.
The surgical facelift remains the gold standard for face and jawline tightening. My advice to patients is to save your gold, and spend half the money and healing time on a safe effective mini-facelift that combines traditional liposuction with state-of-the-art skin tightening via precision radiofrequency heat energy – all available at a doctor’s office near you!
-John Bender, MD, MBA, FAAFP, is CEO of Miramont Wellness Centers, Fort Collins
Learn more about Miramont MedSpa’s FaceTite Procedure
