Nonsurgical facelift procedures have soared in popularity in recent years as women and men have looked for ways to turn back the signs of facial aging without undergoing complex and costly facelift surgery. Today, there are several options for reducing the appearance of lines and wrinkles. To some degree, some of these treatments may also help gently tighten sagging skin. But if you have more significant sagging and laxity in your skin, the results you can achieve with laser- or light-based procedures are probably going to fall pretty far short of what you were hoping for.
At Concord MedSpa, we offer nonsurgical thread lift procedures to help patients gently lift sagging skin in the midface region, the area of your face most likely to cause age-related changes. Thread lift treatments can be completed right in the office, and recovery time is limited. If you’re considering a thread lift, here’s what you should know about the recovery and results following the treatment.
Thread lift nonsurgical facelifts use a principle similar to surgical facelifts. Both use sutures to help hold skin in a lifted position. But while facelift surgery is invasive, using long incisions and involving a prolonged recovery time, a thread lift inserts the sutures under your skin, using a special needle for accurate placement. The threads are made of a special synthetic material called polydioxanone or PDO, which is why a thread lift is sometimes referred to as a PDO facelift or a PDO thread lift.
Prior to your thread lift, your face will be carefully evaluated to ensure your sutures are placed in the best areas to combat the signs of aging as they’re affecting your face. Once the injection sites are identified, your sutures are injected using a special hypodermic, which is preloaded with the PDO material. The hypodermic is designed to enable your provider to place the sutures with a very high degree of accuracy for optimal results.
As the injections are being performed, you may feel some very mild burning or stinging, similar to what you might experience during an acupuncture treatment session. If your skin is very sensitive, we can use a local anesthetic to numb the area prior to injecting the sutures.
The PDO sutures are designed to absorb into your skin over time. Once injected, they go to work immediately to provide an “instant lift,” while also triggering an immune response that increases the production of collagen inside your skin. Collagen is one of skin’s building blocks, helping your skin look and feel firm, smooth, and elastic when you’re young. As you age, your body produces significantly less collagen, and your skin starts to sag, making wrinkles more noticeable. By stimulating collagen production over the next six to eight months, your thread lift can help restore resiliency and firmness to your skin over time.
Of course, one of the major benefits of having a thread lift is that you can still enjoy a gentle lift to combat skin sagging and reduce the appearance of lines and wrinkles without undergoing surgery. With a thread lift, there are no incisions, no general anesthesia, no tissue damage and no scars. You won’t have the extensive swelling and bruising you can have with a surgical facelift, and your recovery is a lot faster and more comfortable. In fact, following a thread lift procedure, there isn’t really any downtime — you can go back to most of your activities shortly after your procedure. Yes, you may have some slight redness, mild swelling and bruising in the injection sites, but these effects will be mild and will begin to resolve soon after your procedure.
Since the thread lift procedure stimulates a natural healing response to promote collagen production inside your skin, you’ll need to avoid strenuous exercise, including all contact sports, for about two to four weeks afterward. You’ll see your initial results at about a month to six weeks after your procedure, and those results will last for as long as 18 months. And because thread lifts are safe and minimally invasive, you can have the procedure repeated to maintain your results.
A thread lift at Concord MedSpa can be a great option for women and men who want to reduce the appearance of facial lines and wrinkles while lifting lax, sagging skin. To learn if it’s a good choice for helping you achieve the results you want, book an appointment online today.
