Micro-Needling

Founded on the skin’s natural ability to repair itself after physical damage, micro-needling encourages the healing process. In essence, the damaged scaffolding of the skin is replaced by newly synthesized collagen and elastin. Following the healing period, the skin becomes tighter, firmer, smoother and fresh.

The needles create thousands of micro channels and micro injuries that not only trigger new collagen production, but also allow many topical products to penetrate deep into the skin. Over a 3-6 month period, the skin repair is completed with gradual but dramatic changes in skin quality.

Micro-needling is well tolerated by patients, but erythema (redness) may be seen after treatment and last for 2-3 days. Sun protection for a week is advised and is best as a routine. Patients may return to work the next day.

Micro-needling can be safely performed on all skin colors and types. There is no risk of post inflammatory hyperpigmentation as the melanocytes, which reside in the basal layer of the epidermis, remain, like the dermis, intact during micro-needling.

Micro-needling can be used in many forms for:

• Skin Rejuvenation: face, neck, chest, hands
• Scars: depressed or keloid, acne, chickenpox, post trauma, surgical
• Stretchmarks: after pregnancy, weight loss
• Skin Tightness: face, eyelids, neck, chest, abdomen, hands
• Enhanced Delivery of Topical Agents: hydration, rejuvenation, abnormal pigment
• Hair Restoration

The most intensive treatments are done in-office. At VISAGE MedArt, we are using advanced forms of micro-needling including intensive treatments combined with other methods in order to achieve the most dramatic results. Maintenance treatments may be done at home using a derma roller specified by your physician.

Micro-Needling or Natural Collagen Induction Therapy was pioneered in 1994 by Swiss-French dermatologist Dr. Phillippe Simonin. He studied 600 patients and published his results in Baran;s Cosmetic Dermatology 1994, but his ground breaking technique which he named Electroridopuncture (ERP), remained largely unknown to the wider medical community for many years.

In his study, he performed 10 treatments on all patients, one group with skin ageing and the other with old scars. In both patient groups, all patients noted improvement with the majority having significant or moderate improvement.

Another pioneer of skin needling was Dr. Andre Camirand, a Canadian Plastic Surgeon who made a chance observation of improvement in the texture and depression of the scars of some of his facelift patients who had undergone tattooing for scar camouflage. He experimented with tattooing facelift scars without pigment, and noted improvement in texture and color. He published his observations in 1992.

Dr. Camirand postulated that hypochromic skin repigmented through transplantation of melanocytes from normal skin into the hypochromic skin during the needling procedure. He also reported flattening of hypertrophic scars. He performed his needling procedures using a high speed tattoo gun under local anesthesia and treated each scar to pinpoint bleeding. He repeated the procedure every 2-8 weeks and no side effects or complications were reported.

Radio frequency (RF) and High Intensity Focused Ultrasound are the only two types of energy that have been found useful for skin rejuvenation, tightening, lifting and scar treatment.  The practical clinical application of radiofrequency energy (RF)  has been in clinical use of over 70 years. More recently, RF was introduced for non-invasive fat reduction, skin tightening and lifting, scar treatment and rejuvenation.   In 2009 FDA cleared the first RF device – Thermage-  for non-invasive treatment of wrinkles . Since then, there have been more than a dozen of devices that have come on the RF market including Exilis and Vanquish.

Micro-needling has been used for many decades in the Far East as a prime tool for skin rejuvenation and treatment of acne and chicken pox scars. Only recently it has become more popular in the western world and has grown to become one of a few non-invasive  and very effective methods for treatment of scars, stretch marks and rejuvenation.

Combining two types of energy, radio frequency and micro-needling with their thermal and mechanical tissue micro-injuries, has brought us a new method of unprecedented effectiveness in skin tightening and scar treatment. The delivery of RF energy is confined to the needle tips sparing the most superficial skin layer. The thermal effect on deeper levels induces substantial collagen stimulation and results in skin tightening not possible with previous technologies. Regulating the depth of needle placement and amount of energy, several layers of the soft tissue can be treated during each session.

Deep RF hand-piece with micro-needles:

Each needle is insulated except for the tip. It allows the radio-frequency energy to flow all the way down to the needle tips where it is converted to heat. This unique energy distribution allows deep layers to be heated while sparing the most superficial layer – the epidermis.

Insulated micro-needles with energy flow to the tips.

Superficial RF:

Superficial fractional RF contains a grid of electrodes that delivers energy to more superficial layers of the skin. The thermal micro-injury initiates the healing mechanisms leading to stimulation of collagen.