Question: Is there anything new for treating wrinkles and skin depressions?
Answer:
Yes, one advance is immediately available. Another is on the horizon.
The advance available now is a skin treatment called microneedling. We use the SkinPen which is a medical grade machine.
The treatment on the horizon is reported to make tissues regrow (very exciting) which may be very popular once the FDA approves basic Fibroblast Growth Factor for clinical use, but this will of course take time.
How does the SkinPen work? The hand-held machine is passed over your skin to make thousands of tiny skin punctures, which stimulates the skin to grow new collagen. It is much more aggressive and effective than a glycolic peel or microdermabrasion, but much less aggressive than a CO2 laser resurfacing or deep TCA peel, both which have risks and about 2 weeks of healing.
SkinPen is an office treatment and can be painful, so numbing medicine is applied. Treatment takes about 30 minutes. You will be red – often very red – for several days and can be mildly bruised. But it does change the skin, filling in superficial acne scars, reducing the depth of deep lines, improving skin texture and at times, may reducing pores – which are notoriously hard to treat. SkinPen can be used anywhere on the body – it is not limited to the face.
Our experience suggests that SkinPen treatment makes therapeutic skin products more absorbable. We suggest patients start tretinoin (generic Retin A) or vitamin C 1-2 weeks after treatment. There are also specially formulated topical products that may improve the skin thickening even more. This is a big advance for office treatments. Although one treatment should lead to improvement, it takes 3 treatments a month apart to get your best result.
The other treatment, which is not yet available, but being talking about, is basic Fibroblast Growth Factor treatment. It will be more expensive, but an office treatment that may replace fillers. This treatment first takes a sample of your blood and separates the Protein Rich Plasma (PRP). This alone has no effect on wrinkles. But once the PRP is separated, it is mixed with bFGF and injected into areas of depression, lines and wrinkles. It stimulates growth of new tissue over the area of injection. Improvement takes 60 days to appear and increases for 6 months. Results are dramatic and, it appears, permanent. They are evident years later, despite natural aging. If this treatment proves as good as reported, it will be very popular indeed.
In the below videos, Dr. Morgan discusses PRP and microneedling.
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