Houston woman feels more youthful after PDO thread lift

Beauty procedures used to be more popular during mid-life, but now that less invasive techniques are available, it's possible to get help much later in life.

If you watch the video version of this story, we just want to let you know, we do show video of needles going into the face.   

We caught up with Barbi Doty, who is almost 70 years old, to find out about her experience with a PDO thread lift. She says Renew Body Contouring and Medical Spa helped her go back in time and look like she did ten years ago.

"I was feeling so lacking in confidence because I thought, oh I've turned into an old lady, and I hated that! Whether other people thought that I don't know, but it's just how I felt, so I feel much better," says Barbi.

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She started by getting her face resurfaced then underwent a PDO thread lift, while she was awake. She chose this method, versus going under the knife. A thread lift involves everything but a typical type of thread.

"They're actually molded to be in like the form of a barb, so that way when they're inserted, they are able to grab a hold of the tissue and pull the tissue up or down, whichever direction, but most want to go up, obviously. There are smooth threads that can go in to help clients. I have a lot of clients who get real deep lines, the worry lines along the forehead, and we're able to go underneath those lines and get right in between those cracks and crevices and fill in that volume so that those lines are gone. There are people with sagging skin, so we're able to go in and lift," states Katina Kearns, Clinical Director at Renew Body Contouring and Medical Spa.

Those threads are made out of the same material as dissolvable sutures. At first, Barbi admits she was a little nervous about it.

"I was putting a foreign body into my face because I thought they would hurt, but neither thing really happened," smiles Barbi.

"My favorite part about it is that I have never had anybody that's had a reaction to it. Because the material that's being used is so safe. It's not something where you'll see somebody gets a massive amount of swelling, or they have a serious reaction from it. It literally comes in, it creates a little bit of scar tissue because as you're moving, those threads are kind of pushing themselves back and forth and they're creating that little bit of scar tissue, which is what's causing that tightening, that hugging of the face is what you feel like your skin is doing," says Kearns.

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She also explains why it takes about six weeks to see the full effects.

"When the threads are inserted in what we call the smas, so this is an area between the skin and basically your upper dermis, that fibrous tissue that's right in there, so when they're inserted in that area, they basically rub together between that little that thread and that smas, so it's creating fiberblasts, which create white blood cells, neocollagenesis, so it's creating more collagen influence in that area, so you'll see skin start to tighten and glow a little as well," explains Kearns.

She says the lift can help pull up saggy skin on the neck and help around the mouth, as well.

"A lot of people have little kiss lines or smoker's lines. This is a great option to get in there because it helps to build those little lines. On Barbi, we actually lined her vermilion border and gave her lips back without having to put filler in. A lot of women Barbi's age are anti-filler for their lips, they don't want the big beautiful puffy lips that the young girls have right now, they just want their natural lip line back, so that gives it a natural lip line coming back again. Then they don't want to have the jowling, they want that lifted face back up again, so this gives the ability to lift the face back up again," states Kearns.

Barbi says there was no downtime for her and she says numbing cream made it painless. She says she could witness her face lifting and appearing more youthful during the procedure.

"It was immediate. That was the best part. I mean, right there when I was still lying they could see results and now keeps tightening up," she states.

Kearns says it also works well lifting arms, breasts, even sagging knees and she has plenty of male clients trying it, as well. The results are expected to last several years. The American Society of Plastic Surgeons says there is very low risk with a thread lift. In rare cases, they say a patient could experience irritation, infection, or sutures becoming visible under the skin, but Renew Body Contouring and Medical Spa says their clients haven't had to deal with those type of symptoms.

Kearns says a facelift in Houston can often cost anywhere from $25,000 - $50,000, but she says this procedure costs from $300-$400 per body part.

For more information, https://renewbodycontouring.com