Ultherapy (skin tightening treatment)

Ultherapy uses ultrasound imaging so when the practitioner places the handset on the area that’s going to be treated, they can see the tissue on-screen and target focused ultrasound beams at the right depth below your skin.

This targeting and rapid heating of the tissues prompt cell renewal beneath the skin and your body responds by producing more elastin and collagen, restoring your skin’s underlying tissue and rejuvenating and tightening the skin. Ultherapy is the only FDA-cleared procedure to ‘lift’ skin on hard-to-treat areas using ultrasound. Your treatment will take between 60-90 minutes.

Once you’ve seen the results you’ll want to experience the treatment all over! But all the studies and initial trials that have been completed for the Ultherapy treatment have been on the face and neck regions, with noticeable results on the brow, cheek, and jowl areas in particular.

Ultherapy was cleared for use on the chest quite recently and according to the manufacturer, there’s no reason why other parts of the body such as the arms, abdominal or skin above the knee, might not benefit from the Ultherapy treatment. It’s just that not enough formal studies have been done yet to prove its effectiveness in those areas.

Comfort thresholds will vary from patient to patient but you should expect mild to moderate pain during the treatment when the ultrasound energy is being delivered.

We often try to minimise this by administering combination painkillers 45 minutes prior to the procedure to provide pain relief. At our London clinic, which is based with The Hospital of St John & St Elizabeth, we are able to use some additional pain relief in the form of Entonox (commonly known as gas and air) to help you through any strong levels of discomfort. Once the treatment is completed, however, there is no pain and patients typically leave comfortable and excited about the benefits to come!

Ultherapy is beneficial for rejuvenating tired-looking or sagging skin, a lowered brow line and other signs of maturing skin.

You’ll be the ideal candidate for Ultherapy if you have a mild to moderate degree of skin laxity and want to improve your skin firmness and volume, but perhaps you’re not fully ready for a surgical skin tightening procedure such as a facelift. Typically, those in their thirties and early forties who have good-quality skin are the best candidates.

Patients who have more advanced levels of skin laxity (sagging) are sometimes advised to consider a facelift procedure to ensure a better result. Nonetheless, patients with more advanced and obvious laxity of the skin but who have already ruled out an invasive surgical facelift, for any number of reasons, may also benefit from the Ultherapy procedure. However, these patients will need to understand that Ultherapy in these circumstances can never mimic or achieve the results obtained with a surgical facelift and therefore have to be prepared to curtail their expectations.

Like many energy-based devices, Ultherapy uses the concept of dermal heating to rejuvenate your skin and tissues. Collagen is one of the main proteins within your skin that gives it its youthfulness, firmness and excellent tone. Unfortunately, as the years go by, your skin loses a proportion of its collagen. Recent discoveries over the last few years have found that heating the deeper portions of the skin and deeper tissues to a certain temperature will help to kick-start your body’s natural repair process to produce new collagen.

In fact, by delivering enough heat into the deeper skin layers and beyond, it creates a ‘unique healing process’ through which both mechanical and biochemical effects ultimately lead to a tightening of the collagen fibres. This is then followed by a well-documented wound response with dermal (deep skin) remodelling and ultimately new collagen formation.

With this aim in mind, a large number of heating ‘energy’ devices have appeared. Ultherapy is unique in that it uses very controlled, focused ultrasound energy directed into the deeper levels of the tissue in order to cause this heat effect.