Objectives: As we age, our facial support structure weakens, and we lose facial bones, fat and connective tissue. The affected areas generally include the cheeks, the eyebrows and other areas around the eyes, the jowls, and the neck. The result is sagginess and older-looking face. As the skin ages, the connective tissue in the skin becomes thinner. The elastic fibers in the skin undergo a type of “breakdown”. The facial skin thus loses some of its elasticity. Younger people may experience cheek and brow ptosis.

Introduction: For these people especially, a thread repositioning, combined with dermal fillers to compensate the volume loss, may be a good alternative to the more invasive procedures. Many people consider surgical facelift, however can't afford it or have a significant concerns about recovery time of the standard facelift and the scars. Threads application could be considered as a less invasive, or preliminary procedure for facial sagginess repositioning. Thread repositioning costs less and require less downtime for many people. Threads can postpone the need for surgery in many cases of facial sagging.

Materials / method: Being semi-invasive procedure threads provide tissue elevation effect. The result lasts relatively long and in an effect similar to that of a moderate brow lift or a lower face and neck lift.
Ignoring the fact that different aging skin issues have to be treated by different types of sutures lead to the considerable dissatisfaction of doctors and patients. Therefore it is crucial to choose the right patient and the right subtype, model and size of the threads to address special needs of every single patient.

Results: For example, for sagging skin correction two crucial characteristics of the sutures must be taken into consideration: their strength and fixation ability in order to reinforce and prolong tissue elevation (repositioning) effect. Modern technologies allow to address those properties during the production process e.g. sutures with bidirectional & 4-dimension oriented cogs to maximize fixation or anchor sutures with triangle shape cogs produced by “no-hit” press & sculpted” molding method to increase their strength, repositioning capacity, and durability of the effect.

Conclusion: These barbs under the skin also tend to gather tissues to fill out and lift the cheeks and sagging skin. Collagen formation occurs around the threads and their cogs or barbs, producing an increasing effect.
At the symposium we will demonstrate and share our experience how to maximize a result, decrease a downtime and increase the patient satisfaction trough combined application of different types of PDO-threads.

Disclosures

Did you receive any funding to support your research for this TOPIC?
No

Were you provided with any honoraria, payment or other compensation for your work on this study?
No

Do you have any financial relationship with any entity which may closely compete with the medications, materials or instruments covered by your study?
No

Do you own or have you applied for any patents in conjunction with the instruments, medications or materials discussed in your study?
No

This work is presented thanks to the support of: CROMA