Non-Surgical Facelift Offers Patients Another Way To Fight Time

2010-07-28 09:47:00

By combining several minimally invasive procedures, Dr. Lou Cole offers facelift-like results - without the downtime and cost.

With the advent of procedures that require no surgery, little to no downtime, and at only a fraction of what typical surgeries would cost, it's no wonder that patients are exploring non-invasive aesthetic options. Now several non-invasive treatments can be combined to give the surgical facelift a run for it's money.

"We do a non-surgical facelift where we use Thermage, Fraxel, Botox, and fillers to get a look that re-volumizes the face," says Dr. Louis Cole, a cosmetic surgeon in Duluth, GA. Thermage is a skin tightening device that uses radio frequency energy to regenerate collagen in the skin. The new collagen makes the skin tighter and firmer - creating a more youthful appearance. Fraxel, on the other hand, is a laser fractional resurfacing device that sends columns of light to the skin, damaging a portion of the epidermis but also leaving areas of undamaged skin between them, greatly improving the skin's ability to heal following the treatment.

For the non-surgical facelift, Dr. Cole uses both Fraxel and Thermage along with injectables to rejuvenate, tighten, and restore volume to the skin. By using these minimally invasive treatments, he creates what he calls the triangle of youth. "Models have these big cheeks and narrow jaw lines. As we age, we get flat cheeks and big jowls." By mimicking the triangle of youth with the combination therapy, he says that patients see a great improvement. "We can take 10 or 15 years off somebody without doing any cutting."

One of the newer procedures is fat transfer to add volume to the face, and recent technological advances to this procedure have made it a permanent solution. However, Dr. Cole likes the temporary nature of fillers since they allow him to update the volume placement as a patient's face changes. "We haven't used fat in the face right now, but we've used the Radiesse, Sculptra, Juvederm and Perlane. One reason I haven't used the fat in the face is because as the face ages, what looked good at 35 might not look good at 60."

Dr. Cole adds that while patients may be tempted to have the fat transfer procedure to add volume to the face, it might not be best solution in the long run. "It sounds good because you only pay once, but I think that as the face ages, things change and the results may not look as good 10 or 15 years later."

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