Are Ultherapy results permanent?

Ultherapy is a great non-surgical treatment to help reverse laxity. It creates new collagen which will tighten and lift the skin. It typically takes up to 6 months to see your full result. However, at that point you will still continue to age. Unfortunately nothing can stop the aging process. Not even surgery will give you a permanent result. Eventually you will need another treatment. We suggest a treatment every 2 years. You may also come in at 1 year if you have severe signs of aging, or just need a touch up treatment on a concentrated area of concern. Hope this helps.

Ultherapy can do an excellent job of tightening the skin on the face and neck that has just begun to sag. It uses ultrasound energy to heat and shrink the collagen layer, and stimulate the skin to produce fresh new collagen. Results can last for several years. Not even a facelift is permanent, simply because we are all at the mercy of gravity and age. We can turn back the clock, but the clock keeps ticking! You will notice tighter and more youthful skin about 3 months after your Ultherapy treatment that will continue to tighten for 3 more months. Most studies indicate results will last 1 ½ to 2 years. Combining Ultherapy with fillers, neuromodulators like Botox and good skin care will extend the duration of your results as well as the beauty of the results. Please find a board-certified dermatologist who is an expert in using Ultherapy to lift the face. 

The aging process continues. Having had utlherapy for facial tightening and seeing improvement will mean that in a couple of years or so, despite new collagen formation, there will be continued descent of the face, as there is after a facelift. Ultheapy can not approach the amount of skin tightening that a facelift can do and one still sees the effect of age and gravity after having had Ultherapy. Some patients repeat it two years later and some even a  year later.

No skin tightening treatment will give permanent results. This is because as we age our bodies will continue to break down collagen. Longevity of Ultherapy results will depend on the quality of your skin, quality of the treatment provided, etc. In general Ultherapy should be repeated every 6-12 months and works best when used in combination with other treatments. Make sure you find an experienced provider. Best wishes.

Hi and thank you for your question! We have seen fantastic results with Ultherapy for skin lifting and tightening, even after one treatment with very little to no downtime. We recommend Ultherapy once every 1-1.5 years for ideal result. There are no non-surgical skin tightening/lifting devices that provide a permanent result and even surgery is not permanent. We are also using Profound Microneedling for skin lifting and we are evaluating if these results may last a bit longer than a year. In general, doing some type of treatment for collagen stimulation every year is recommended to stay on top of the aging process. Best, Dr. Grant Stevens

Ultherapy is a procedure that boosts your bodies own collagen in the area of treatment.  Since the collagen in your body naturally decreases overtime, ultherapy can't be considered a permanent procedure.  Even after boosting and tightening the collagen with Ultherapy, the results will decrease over time. I typically recommend repeating the procedure every year to two years to continue to improve upon the results Ultherapy gives, as well as continue to boost the collagen.  I like to tell patients to think of the procedure as a workout for your face, so you do need to repeat it.

Dr. William Greenberg NYC 

Dear evelynn84:There is a good deal of confusion when around the permanence of some procedures, which I would like to clarify. The beneficial tightening and lifting of the skin seen with Ultherapy, or face or neck lifts for that matter, as well as the smoothing of the skin, does not go away with time and in that sense, is “permanent.” We all age over time, so after a variable period of time you will see wrinkles and laxity of the skin even if you had Ultherapy or a face or necklift, but you should realize that it will be better than if you never had the treatment done. There is nothing about the changes that occur that reverse just because time has passed. I hope this makes sense to you, but we will be discussing it more at our #OpenHouse on October 25th, along with #Kybella.All the best, Dr. Clark

Collagen production declines as we age.  In addition, due to harmful free radicals formed by environmental factors such as UV rays, pollution, pesticides, smoking, etc., the breakdown of collagen increases as well.  Ultherapy is a wonderful way to boost your collagen production to help lift and tighten areas of the face, chin, neck and décolleté area, but you can see why the results with Ultherapy or any other tightening treatment can't possibly be permanent due to the above factors.
I recommend my patients due a maintenance Ultherapy treatment at least once a year to optimize the results and keep up with the decreased production and increased breakdown of collagen.  
Dr. Sunanda Chugh, NYC

A number of factors can affect the length of time a treatment ,such as Ulthera, will last.  It is also difficult to compare the effects against the results of a CO2 ablative laser as this is a totally different treatment.  
Generally your age, skin condition, lifestyle and collagen quality are all considerations, but I have found that most patient I have treated with HIFU (high intensity focused ultrasound) treatments have found that the effects last 2-3 years and are happy to return for further treatment to help maintain the result.