Would PRP/Vampire technique help my skin to heal or get back to the stage it was 3 years
ago?
My face got damaged 3 years ago with microneedling and Tretinoin 0,025% cream.
Now that a long time has passed and cell turnover did not heal my skin I'm trying to find some
"natural" way of getting my face fixed.
Plastic surgery or PRP are 2 options.
Can PRP do any further damage to my face?
I rather pay for something that can't do damage/any good but there is a possibility that it helps
than pay of something that I must regret for the rest of my life.
Could someone please help me.
Thank you.
Thank you for your question!
You’re asking about trying to restore skin that you described as being damaged from microneedling
and the use of Tretinoin and that you prefer to do something that won’t cause damage
and you want to learn more about PRP and the vampire facelift treatment.
We’ll, I’ll tell you that you are certainly in good company.
I am a cosmetic surgeon practicing in Manhattan and Long Island for over 20 years and I’ve
seen a lot of different modalities come and go with the expectation that certain level
of trauma to the skin will result in improvement.
And that concept is true but there have been many patients who come to us who have had
for example frequent laser treatment or have had repeated treatment with thermal devices
with the intention of tightening skin.
there’s a very straightforward threshold where beyond which you can’t stimulate the
skin from just heating it or ablating it enough to get enough collagen.
And so in our practice, we’ve actually used platelet-rich plasma to help a lot of people
who have had issues related to hyperpigmentation related to loss of volume in the skin.
For example, we’ve used it in the tear trough area for hollowing, thinning of the skin,
for a variety of reasons including lasers.
Although the photos you’ve submitted have been drawn over to protect your identity,
but I can tell you that there are a couple of things you can be assured of.
Platelet-rich plasma to date, I’m not aware of anything in literature, has not harmed
anyone.
The reason for this is probably intuitive but it’s derived from your own blood and
is concentration of the healing factors, the platelets, the growth factors, the vascular
stimulating factors that are necessary when you get a simple cut.
So when you think about it, injecting this material into the skin and under the skin,
should not cause harm.
Our patients report that their skin has a nice glow and I’ve used this for a lot of
revision procedures.
We’ve had patients coming from all over the world who have problems with their lower
eyelid being pulled down and who have had multiple operations.
We’ve used this material to help rehabilitate the scar tissue under the eyes and in addition,
support the surgical procedures in order to restore their appearance.
I’ve used it to help scars improve in appearance and these scars that are all over the body,
not just in the face.
So, just to give you an understanding of what the vampire procedure is, well there is the
vampire facelift and this is simply a concept of using a single syringe of a hyaluronic
acid filler in combination with platelet-rich plasma and you may find that there may be
some value in combining platelet-rich plasma with volume correction.
You can only get so much improvement of volume which really, platelet-rich plasma can’t
do that much.
It improves skin quality, skin thickness but it does not restore volume in the way a filler
does.
And so that’s something you have to understand.
There is the vampire facial which was very made famous by Kim Kardashian because it involved
combining platelet-rich plasma with microneedling to the skin and she made it famous because
she had little blood spots on her skin from the level of depth of the microneedling.
Now that could also be adjusted but I think that you’re done with any microneedling
device.
I think for you injection under the skin done timed.
In our practice, we typically do platelet-rich plasma injection over the course of over 3-4
months looking at how the skin responds and our patients seem to respond very well to
this.
It has a very unique niche in the aesthetic world because no filler can stimulate collagen
and stimulate blood supply and create the effect that platelet-rich plasma does.
So a lot of times, we do this in combination whether it’s in the form of vampire facelift
procedure or in combination with other fillers.
Again, we customize for every patient.
But understanding that platelet-rich plasma will probably help you rehabilitate your skin
and sticking with it.
I always describe it as comparison to exercise.
You don’t go to the gym once and do one set of exercise and expect that it will last
you forever.
You go regularly.
So platelet-rich plasma can have both the reparative benefit as well as a maintenance
benefit to keep your skin looking good which obviously is very important to you.
So I hope that was helpful, I wish you the best of luck and thank you for your question!