Dr. Scott Thompson, utah facial plastic surgeon and necklift specialist, discusses the best surgical and non-surgical neck tightening procedures available today on Good Things Utah with Nicea DeGering.
Nicea DeGering: Dr. Scott Thompson is joining me now from Utah Facial Plastics ad we are talking about non-surgical and surgical options for neck tightening. I might be wearing a turtleneck today for a reason. But it’s true, sometimes you look in the mirror and say, ‘I feel great but why is that skin not as tight as it used to be. This is an area that so many women and men see when they look in the mirror.
Dr. Scott Thompson: Yeah, I’d say one of the most common things I hear people say in our office from patients of all ages. For patients in their 20’s or 30’s, they feel despite how much they work out and diet, they just can’t lose the fat under the chin. Or the older patient who comes saying they used to have this amazing jawline and now they see all this saggy muscle and skin.
Nicea: I think you take care of your face and your body but sometimes your neck gets left by the wayside.
Dr. Thompson: Yeah, and the neck skin just doesn’t have the same elasticity that the rest of the body has and it’s also susceptible to scarring from laser procedures and things so it’s just a tough area to treat sometimes.
Nicea: Alright, so if someone came in and they were worried about that fat area, what would be a non-surgical option?
Dr. Thompson: So if it’s kind of an isolated moderate area there’s a new treatment we’ve talked about before called Kybella, which is an injection into the chin that usually involves a few treatments but dissolves fat. It’s been FDA approved now for several years and we’ve been using it and really happy with it. For most people, 5-6 treatments to get a significant result. It does seem to tighten the skin a bit as well.
Nicea: Is there a surgical option you’d recommend?
Dr. Thompson: For this patient here you can see how improved the neck and jawline is. For him a big part of his problem was his chin. We needed to augment his chin a bit in addition to removing some of the fat and that’s more of a surgical procedure. But even with that the downtime is minimal and he was back to work almost immediately with minimal bruising. Sometimes people get a little bit nervous about surgery but sometimes we can do things in the office and the recovery is quick and works great.
Nicea: What is it about the word ‘facelift’ that makes people afraid?
Dr. Thompson: Well, I think it’s a procedure that’s been around for a long time and there’s certainly a stigma that’s been associated with it in the past. People continue to see well-known people with a lot of money that don’t seem to have good results from facelifts so understandably there is some concern and caution in proceeding with a facelift. But there have really been a lot of amazing advances in the field of facial plastic surgery to the point now where we can perform a facelift and necklift on somebody and they can really retain their unique identity and features and can look natural but can restore what they used to look like 10 or 15 years ago.
Nicea: That’s the key is that you still look like you.
Dr. Thompson: Yes…it’s to restore and not to change.
Nicea: What about the tightening? We talked about the fat removal. Both of these procedures work for the tightening of the skin as well?
Dr. Thompson: Yes, they do to a moderate degree. If it’s fairly mild to moderate that’s when I’ll typically recommend the non-surgical treatments. When the skin really becomes very lax, there are a few options. My partner that just joined me, Dr. Douglas Henstrom, he does a direct neck excision that’s a non-facelift type of procedure that sometimes a lot of men are looking for and need to get back to work quickly so there are a lot of surgical options and a lot of non-surgical options and it just depends on how advanced the laxity is.
Nicea: I like that you mentioned men as well as women because this is something that both are interested in.
Dr. Thompson: Yeah, so many men come in who don’t care about anything but the loose neck skin.
Nicea DeGering: I recommend following Utah Facial Plastics on social media because they do a lot of these procedures and walk through them so you can watch and see what happens and get a sense for what to expect. Utah Facial Plastics is on Instagram and also on Facebook. You can also learn more at utahfacialplastics.com and they are currently offering $400 off Kybella plus one free area of Botox while supplies last.