Liposuction is excellent at sculpting by removing unwanted fat, but it doesn’t magically tighten loose skin. This can leave behind an undesirable sagging effect.
Advanced energy-based devices offer an exciting opportunity. These innovative technologies combine minimally invasive fat removal with skin tightening in one step, eliminating the need for extensive incisions associated with traditional options like tummy tucks in cases of mild to moderate skin laxity.
Imagine achieving a smoother, slimmer appearance without the scars and lengthy recovery times. These minimally invasive techniques harness lasers, radiofrequency, or ultrasound to stimulate collagen production and retract the skin, delivering impressive results with less downtime.
We have developed a method to combine these techniques to achieve superb results in a wider range of patients. We call it the “suspension bridge” method.
Read on to find out why.
Imagine a person in his or her forties that has a little more arm fat and a little more loose skin than they might like.
Liposuction effectively eliminates stubborn fat, sculpting a more defined shape. However, if the skin does not adequately contract on its own, it may obscure the fat removal results achieved with liposuction. This is especially true for those with less elastic skin due to genetics, rapid weight loss, age, or other factors.
You can think of the loose skin hanging from the arm like a suspension bridge hanging from its cables, where the cables are connective tissue fibers that attach the skin to deeper tissues. It might look something like this:
“In the old days” the only way to tighten this bridge would have been to cut some of it out and reconnect the edges, like this (purple arrows):
This works well but leaves extensive scars and often requires weeks of recovery. So, various technologies came along to try to tighten the bridge without cuting it in half first. They all work by using energy to deliver heat to the tissues in different ways.
After extensive experience, we’ve made some observations.
Ultrasound energy (a device called VASER) offers moderate skin tightening on its own. We think of it as working primarily to tighten the deeper connective tissues, or the cables of the bridge, like this (red arrows represent the ultrasound energy tightening the deep connective tissue):
Bipolar radiofrequency (a device called VASER), on its own, does a bit more skin tightening, as it focusses on the skin itself and the tissues just underneath the skin.
In our bridge example, it might like something like this (green arrows represent the radiofrequency energy tightening the skin):
But when you combine VASER and BodyTite, that’s where the magic happens: next-level skin tightening with minimally invasive devices.
Patients with significant skin laxity are seeing great results with this combined technique. For our bridge, we think of it looking like this (red and green arrows are the radiofrequency and ultrasound energy working together):
Since VASER (ultrasound) passes through all layers of the treatment area, and BodyTite focusses primarily on the skin itself, we called this stacked energy approach “suspension bridge” body contouring: VASER tightens the cables holding the bridge up, and BodyTite shortens the road.
The result?
Tight skin with nearly invisible scarring and often no missed work at all. Get in touch to learn more!
