Can it give to over 65 person?
After Kybella, do we need surgery to remove skin sag?
Thank you for your question!
You submitted a question where you’re asking that if you get Kybella over the age of 65,
will you need surgery to address the sagging skin.
Well, I think you’re definitely in the right track by asking this question.
It’s very important to understand that new drugs or new devices show up in the market
and have this incredible promise of displacing surgery, that the principles of human anatomy,
physiology and the issues of aging still always apply.
So how I’m educating my patients about Kybella, the drug that supposed to reduce fat by literally
dissolving it by injection is that if a person is a candidate for liposuction, in other words
they have a little extra fat under the chin but they have good skin tone, then if I were
to suction out that area and the skin would retract upward, then they can potentially
be a candidate for Kybella.
Now my personal bias is that, although the data remains to be fully seen from many more
people using it, is that under the chin or submental fat, if you have a limited amount
under the chin, well the surgical approach is not that different from getting an injection.
It’s a little bit of local anesthesia and approximately less than half an hour, you
can get everything done.
Buy Kybella does offer this opportunity for people who want to try something that’s
non-surgical which means people have to come back for injections over and over and it remains
to be seen on how consistent it will be.
For someone who’s over 65, usually the skin is not that resilient.
Basically, you are dealing with the second aspect of facial aging.
The first is being volume loss.
that’s why people in their 40s can look better by having volume correction.
So if you are losing bone, muscle, fat in the face, everything’s going in and you
add volume.
When you are beyond that, there’s more descent.
There’s sagging, loss of definition of the jawline, extra neck skin.
For those patients, ultimately, they need some kind of a face lifting procedure.
And so if you think it through, if you get Kybella, then you’ll still have the sagging
skin and the overall look will probably be not much better.
In fact it’s pretty much well known amongst cosmetic surgery colleagues that the wrong
procedure for the patient can often make them look worse.
So if someone feels like they have too much skin under their chin and we’ve seen this
many times, they’ll get liposuctioned and then the patient is stuck which appears to
be more excess skin and it’s because the volume added some contour and without that,
the skin is just loose.
So proper diagnosis and proper counseling is key.
It’s always exciting, as I said before, that something comes out that has promise.
Being in practice for over 20 years, practicing in Manhattan and Long Island, I’ve seen
a lot of things come and go whether it’s endermology, whether it’s thread lifts,
whether it’s the many different thermal devices which are more showing how ineffective
they are.
They can’t lift skin like a facelift.
The principles of doing the right thing for the right reasons, for the right candidate
withstand the test of time.
So it’s very important that you meet with qualified experienced cosmetic surgeons and
discuss this new modality, this drug and see how it fits for you in the context of your
concerns.
But if you are over 65, most likely you need some type of surgical procedure in that’s
dependent on the presence of jowling, extra skin, platysmal bands and all the other factors
that people get as we get older.
So I hope that was helpful, I wish you the best of luck and thank you for your question!