If you’re reading Dr. Lee’s blog, it’s likely you follow trends in the aesthetic world. Then you surely have heard about microneedling becoming more and more popular with celebrities and the general public. The same can be said for skin tightening treatments utilizing radiofrequency energy.

But what if you combined the two into a single procedure?

You’d have Infini,™ microneedling coupled with the delivery of radiofrequency energy. We offer Infini™ at our Bryn Mawr practice, and our patients love their results.

Microneedling

The first part of Infini’s technology uses very thin needles (200 microns wide) that can be set to penetrate the skin at varying depths from 0.5 to 3.5 mm. This helps because the skin is thicker in some areas than others, so this accommodates more treatable areas.

Microneedling creates hundreds of microscopic channels in the treatment areas. These punctures are so minute they begin to heal immediately, but the body thinks it has been wounded with all of these punctures. In response fibroplasts in the skin are stimulated and they begin to produce collagen to repair the “wound.” The other great thing about microneedling has always been the ability to deliver topical therapeutics to greater depths in the skin thanks to the punctures.

+ RF energy

Infini™ takes microneedling to a new level by adding radiofrequency energy. Radiofrequency (RF) energy has been used in medicine for over 70 years, but it came to the aesthetic world around 2002 with the debut of Thermage®, which was the first RF treatment for skin tightening approved by the FDA.

The idea is to send RF energy through the epidermis down into the skin’s second layer, the dermis. This energy becomes heat, and when the dermis is heated the body responds as if wounded by producing new collagen to repair and support the skin, which causes contraction and tightening of the skin. This provides a second level of collagen production added to that created by the microneedling.

The Infini™ needles are insulated and each needle emits RF energy from the tip. This has the advantage of delivering the RF energy under the epidermis (the skin’s outer layer). In other RF procedures, the energy has to travel through the epidermis, and this can cause pain. Infini™ delivers the RF energy at the depth of the needle penetration. Other RF procedures have difficulty heating the dermis (the skin’s second layer) to a temperature that effectively triggers collagen production. This is because those procedures have to go through the epidermis. Infini™ does not, so it can deliver more RF and more heating of the dermis.

Want to give your skin a one-two burst of collagen production and skin tightening? Call our team at Bryn Mawr Facial Aesthetics Center, (610) 789-6701, and ask about Infini™.