Thank you for your question.
You stated in your question, but you didn’t submit with a photo, but you stated in your
question that your aesthetician recommended that you get micropen or microneedling treatment
every 3 weeks and you’re asking is this safe.
Well, certainly I can give you my perspective based on my experience.
A little bit of background, I’m a Board-certified cosmetic surgeon and Fellowship-trained oculofacial
plastic and reconstructive surgeon.
I have been in practice in Manhattan and Long Island for over 20 years.
Microneedling is a part of my practice along with other cosmetic dermatologic solutions
of lasers etc.
In fact, we actually combine microneedling very frequently with the use of topical platelet-rich
plasma (PRP).
I’ll explain to you why in a moment.
So the question is why is it 3 weeks and what is the significance of that?
From my perspective, microneedling is basically controlled injury to the skin.
So to understand the physiology, you injure the skin purposely to address certain issues
and most of the time, you are dealing with a healing process in order to improve the
skin.
And that is not only true for microneedling.
It’s true with various lasers whether it’s ablative, fractional, non-ablative.
This is really the foundation of a lot of dermatologic procedures.
So when you look at wound healing, wound healing goes through a stage that’s very important
called the proliferative stage.
This occurs about 4 weeks.
So the question we have to ask is where is the advantage of re-wounding the skin at 3
weeks?
Is it to time it to maximize the collagen?
If such is the case, I would probably be more conservative and recommend waiting 4-6 weeks.
When we do microneedling, with that understanding in mind about the proliferative stage of wound
healing, we actually use platelet-rich plasma (PRP) as a topical to get into the openings
which are created by the microneedling process.
And why is that?
Well, platelet-rich plasma (PRP) is a concentration of the wound healing growth factors that are
needed when you get a cut.
And what it does is it stimulates new collagen, it stimulates blood supply, it has multiple
beneficial factors that enhance the healing process.
You see, the concept of controlled injury resulting in your body’s response, well
with platelet-rich plasma (PRP), we augment the body’s response.
And the reason why I’m stating that is that I’m trying to maximize the collagen response.
Now I would feel that if I’m taking someone’s skin and re-treating them at 3 weeks, I’m
inducing a new injury probably earlier than the full healing of the previous treatment.
So with that understanding in my mind, I would probably say, even if you’re doing a lighter
treatment, you’re going down about half a millimeter, you have to really understand
what’s the purpose.
The deeper you go, and the range can be half a millimeter to 2.5 millimeters, the deeper
you go, the more injury you create, the longer it takes to heal.
So you have to have this discussion and understand what’s the purpose of this treatment.
If your esthetician is recommending every 3 weeks, then chances are it’s more of a
superficial treatment.
But if it is a more superficial treatment, what’s your endpoint?
What are you looking to finally accomplish?
Where does this journey find a plateau with this type of treatment and when does the maintenance
phase begin?
That’s the kind of the idea of therapeutic intervention in the skin is you sometimes
have to do something aggressively either at a single time or over several visits then
you have to do something for maintenance.
So these are the questions that you have to bring up to your aesthetician so you can get
a clear understanding.
It’s not my intention to undermine what the recommendation is but it’s my goal that
you understand what the logic is.
I feel that every patient should be very educated about the plan so that they can participate
intelligently in their results.
So I hope that was helpful, I wish you the best of luck and thank you for your question.