Does the vampire facelift PRP really work?
Is it practitioner dependent?
I have severe thermage damage, fat loss, etc will this benefit the damaged tissue and plump?
It's V expensive, so I wouldn't want to waste my money.
Thank you for your question!
You expressed in your question first and foremost that you had severe damage to your skin including
fat loss for thermage and you’re asking, does the vampire facelift work, is it practitioner
dependent and of course you mention that the expense of doing this and it’s understandable
you you’re being cautious.
Well, to give you a little background about myself, I’m a board-certified cosmetic surgeon.
I made fellowship training cosmetic oculofacial plastic surgeon.
I have been in practice in Manhattan and Long Island for over 20 years and I am a member
of the vampire facelift network and I’m certainly been prominent about the education
of patients about what a vampire facelift is.
So I think we have a real opportunity here to learn what it is before you decide whether
or not it is right for you.
So to begin with, I spent time with the creator of the vampire facelift Dr. Charles Runels
who developed this idea of combining a hyaluronic acid filler and typically, by definition,
with the vampire facelift, it’s one syringe of a hyaluronic acid filler.
And that is a combination of the use of platelet-rich plasma (PRP).
Now, I, like many other doctors and surgeons, when I first heard about this, I was circumspect
about this.
I was suspicious about the name and the inaccuracies and the misinterpretations that the individual
can interpret who sees the word vampire facelift.
For me, it didn’t make any sense.
Well of course, the general population who is interested in rejuvenation very much embraced
this name.
The term vampire facelift has for a long time, actually out ranked in terms of search the
word Botox.
So you can imagine the level of popularity this term and it has received a lot of media
attention because of prominent people celebrities who had this done.
When I first looked into this, I thought, why is it called a facelift when there’s
not surgery being performed.
Well, doctor Runels explained this to me and from his perspective, it has a certain validity
even though it’s not generally recognized in the surgical community in the same way.
When we do facelifts in cosmetic surgery, we’re lifting things upward.
When Dr. Runels came up with this name, he thought of it as lifting the face outward.
When we think of facial aging, we think of volumetric loss not just sagging.
Two elements: volume loss, bone, muscle, fat, soft tissue and in situations like yours,
iatrogenic or loss or related to medical procedure or cosmetic procedure where there is volume
loss.
you feel deflated.
And of course facial aging and sagging.
Well, it is very important to at least understand that when he says it’s about a facelift,
he’s taking about an outward lift.
In other words, everything is lifting away from the bone.
As we get older, we can describe someone as becoming more skeletonized.
When you’re young, you have all this beautiful fat and thickness and skin quality that’s
beautiful and as we get older, we lose that and in a much older person, you can see a
lot more of the underlying structure.
Okay, which is great.
Now the vampire name derives from the element of the procedure that uses platelet-rich plasma
(PRP) and platelet-rich fibrin matrix.
So let’s just understand what platelet-rich plasma and how platelet-rich fibrin matrix
is related.
Platelet-rich plasma is a concentration of the wound healing growth factors and necessary
elements of the blood that is required when you have a cut as well as the cells needed
called platelets.
Observations in oral surgery and orthopedic surgeon have already validated the benefit
of platelet rich plasma in tissue where you want to expedite healing.
In our practice, we have used it many ways.
We have used it in skin quality, we’ve used it for scar treatment, we’ve used it in
combination with Acellular matrix for hair loss for a procedure we call Hair Regeneration.
So there’s no question that platelet-rich plasma has a lot of value.
The challenge we have is in the perception and the misinterpretation of what it can and
cannot do.
Many of our colleagues believed that platelet-rich plasma could be a replacement for fillers.
It cannot be.
Platelet-rich plasma improves skin texture and quality.
It improves collagen, it improves healthiness or the viability of the fat cells.
It improves blood supply, vascularization.
Basically, what we lose as we get older, platelet-rich plasma plays a very good role in helping this
tissue.
I’ve also used it in reconstructive and very complex cases where people have had issues
such as facial cellulitis infection and other areas where they have scarring.
And I have been very successful in helping to rehabilitate the skin with platelet-rich
plasma.
So in terms of vampire facelift, which is a very specific trademark name and only people
who are in this network have had training as well as experience in this particular treatment,
it is a specific way to do a combination of hyaluronic acid filler to restore volume in
areas such as the lateral or outer part of the eyebrow, the cheek, the outer corner of
the lips and PRP to help improve skin quality and glow.
There’s no other filler than can make the skin glow the way PRP is able to.
So that brings us to the topic of practitioner dependency.
It’s not a generic procedure.
No procedure is a generic procedure.
When patients or perspective patients call around and ask how much do we charge for Restylane,
Botox, Juvederm, I always feel like they missed the big picture altogether.
These materials whether it’s a filler or a blood product, by themselves, they are of
no value.
it is how the doctor applies these treatments.
There is an art to everything we do, there’s a judgement.
So when you choose a practitioner, it’s very important that you get the sense that
this doctor has a lot of experience with this material and understands your situation.
Thermal based damage of skin, is become finally, a greater concern.
Unfortunately, the medical or cosmetic industry is dominated by the messaging of large market
capitalization companies that can really flood the media with the latest and greatest heating
devices.
And what happens is that it creates a lot of demand and patients find themselves going
from thermal device to another thermal device to another or they stay with thermal device
and the doctor keeps saying, maybe after they get disappointment from the first treatment,
well let’s go higher let’s get deeper.
And what ultimately happens is the tissue literally gets burned.
The fat under the skin, as you’ve experienced, literally gets cooked away and that fat is
critically important.
Now I’ve had a lot of success in helping people with PRP who have had this thermal
energy issues but it is not likely to bring you back to a very vibrant quality if there
is a lot of fat loss.
once the fat is burned or cooked, then it’s very difficult to do anything to get the tissue
back to where it once was but it does require examination, it requires judgment and requires
you investing time and probably some money in order to meet with doctors who have experience
with PRP and learn what your potential benefit is.
It’s a reality that more and more people are searching for solutions for the trauma
caused by thermal devices.
Again, it’s not the device itself.
We have Pelleve in our practice, it’s a radiofrequency device but I use it in a very
limited way for specific indications.
I don’t use it as it is perceived or its class of devices are perceived as non-surgical
alternatives to cosmetic surgeries or ways to tighten skin that is getting lose.
It just doesn’t work that way.
So PRP in summary is a very good way to improve your skin quality.
Yes, it is practitioner dependent.
There are ways to inject it.
There are methods, the levels it is injected at, how you inject it, how you mix it.
There are a lot of different things so you should meet with doctors who really understand
and use PRP a lot.
And as far as the vampire facelift, this may or may not be the right thing for you if you’re
looking specifically rehabilitation of your skin.
if you’re looking for only rehabilitation of your skin, then you don’t necessarily
need the hyaluronic acid filler but that requires an examination.
So I hope that was helpful, I wish you the best of luck and thank you for your question!