Thursday, December 10, 2009

Sculptra Liquid Face Lifting

I'd heard of Sculptra many years ago, but other than it being a type of filler for large volume facial filling, never thought much more about it. However, when I saw a video presentation about it at a recent aesthetic conference, my interest was piqued. As an added bonus, as part of the launch of the product in Singapore, they were offering to train interested doctors for free. Their trainer was scheduled to fly in from Australia to give personal tuition to each interested doctor.

It was our turn today!

We had three excited (albeit a little nervous) volunteers lined up for the treatment. One had a full liquid face lift, going from temples to upper cheeks to naso-labial folds to jowls. The second had filling of her hollow tear troughs and below her acne scars. The last, sadly, was breastfeeding, so was postponed till January.

The technique is pretty straightforward. Each treatment could be done in 10 minutes once perfected. We didn't really take much longer, just wasted a lot of time joking around with each other. The volume increase is seen straight away, so the response from both volunteers was "wow!". Pin point bruising is possible, but this resolves quickly. The "swelling" lasts a couple of days, then the body slowly builds new natural collagen over the next ten months. A top-up (if required) is done a month later. The final results last 2 years.

So why do I want to learn Sculptra? We've used machines for face lifting for years now. It works well for some, not so well for others. The less adequate results are usually with people with low cheek volumes. Even surgical face lifting would not give great results with such folks, as the skin might be tight, but the features not youthful.

So what does Sculptra do? By stimulating new collagen production, it adds volume to the face. Three vials are required on average, but very thin faces may need 10! The skin quality also improves. And by injecting in specific traction lines, a lifting effect can be created.

I was quite concerned about the safety of the product. There are some scary stories online, afterall! So I quizzed them in detail. As a company, Sanofi looks at all the problems seriously, and concluded that the problems occurred with wrong technique and/or bad practice. Early on, they diluted the product with very little water, so the product set into hard rocks. Now, it is injected extremely dilute, and carefully massaged into the face to ensure even spread. Tear trough reconstruction can be safely approached by injecting upwards from the mid cheek. The lumps seen are from depot injections directly through the eye muscles into very thin skin. The product also had to be diluted the day before to ensure complete dissolution. That is a relief, as hollow tear troughs & flat cheeks are extremely common and result in premature ageing.

So I'm very happy to finally have a volumizing treatment available. Well, once we order the product anyway... But that won't be too far in the future.