How Warm Will the Skin Feel During the Ulthera Procedure?

The skin only elevates a few degrees Celsius during Ulthera.  The temperature elevation is important to occur in the deep dermis to incite collagen production and connective tissue tightening. The pain is a deep heat pain. Some say it feels like hot needles, but it is temporary and is so fleeting that when we're on the next line of treatment, the sore spot feels better already. The pain is almost gone at the end of the procedure when patients are discharged. At that time it might feel like a sunburn.

Your skin will feel the heat, but only for a fraction of a second. Thousands of Intense, but short pulses of heat are delivered during a single treatment. The heat does not build up or make your skin feel warm to the touch. Different people have different pain tolerances, and ultherapy can be quite uncomfortable during the treatment. There is no pain once the treatment session has ended. Many patients choose to have nerve blocks or pain medication to make the procedure more comfortable.

Any time I perform a deep energy treatment I perform nerve blocks that make the entire face feel numb.  Most patients are able to relax completely.

 

All the best,

 

Rian A. Maercks M.D.

Ulthera treatments (Ultherapy) use highly focused bursts of ultrasound energy to stimulate tightening in collagen layers under the skin. Each pulse is very short because the temperature needed is high, but it isn't a continuous warming that you would feel on the skin. The effect takes about 3 months to peak after a single treatment.

Ulthera focuses ultrasound energy at focal points below the skin nearly half a centimeter deep to cause a controlled and directed thermal injury, thereby initiating the body's natural healing and repair mechanisms to rebuild your tissues. It will not heat the skin or cause any damage to the skin - it essentially passes through it to the deeper focal point. The deeper spots do heat and can be painful, especially around nerves or over bone. We routinely give our patients nerve blocks to make the procedure comfortable and very tolerable. I feel that by blocking the face, it allows me to maximize the treatment energy and hence results. Our patients do very well with the blocks and advil or tyelenol, however we do offer other measures for comfort if needed.

The skin temperature on the surface does not increase much. You won't discern such increases by touching the skin and you won't feel it. It is NOT like radiofrequency treatments. RF energy turns off after impedence measurements reach a certain value, indicating that the temperature has increased to a certain value. Read the Ultherapy book provided on the link below under 'ebooks'

We use high temperatures to cause the tissue to ultimately tighten over three months. 95% of my patients complete the procedure without analgesia while 5% do need local anesthesia similar to dental blocks. Time and again, every case will gladly profess any discomfort was worth the result.