Neck Laxity: Non-invasive Treatment or Surgery?

Your neck often gets the short end of the stick because it’s slower to show its age, but it deserves the same treatments as your face when you’re putting together an anti-ageing game plan (think neuromodulators, mesotherapy, skinboosters…).

Here are your best bets for keeping your neck skin in tip-top shape:

A proper neck prevention protocol requires a cosmeceutical, a quality product with active ingredients of proven efficacy. After testing several products from various commercial brands, there’s one product that stands out well above the competition: Neostrata SkinActive Neck and Décolletage. Due to its high concentration of alpha-hydroxy acids, it’s an excellent dermal stimulator, which translates to slowing down the passage of time on the surface. But remember: it only serves to prevent, it won’t retighten the neck.

Skinboosters are products that deeply hydrate the skin whilst stimulating fibroblasts, responsible for maintaining skin elasticity and firmness. Usually two sessions per year are sufficient for maintenance, although proper medical advice is essential to check if they’re indicated in your case.

Although prevention is the best tool to avoid premature sagging and parchment-like texture of neck skin, we don’t always arrive in time. What can we do?

At this point, we need to consider somewhat more intensive treatments, which should be added to a skinbooster protocol for maintenance:

Radiofrequency involves controllably increasing the dermis temperature, reaching 39-42° at the surface. Thanks to thermal stimulation, it’s possible to reactivate fibroblasts, thus improving skin elasticity. However, it only improves skin quality, so it’s NOT a useful treatment for managing excess fat or sagging.

In very selected cases, focused ultrasound (HIFU) can help improve neck appearance. I usually reserve this option for patients who don’t want surgery and who only have discrete loss of jawline definition and a small excess of neck fat.

Let me be very clear: thread lifts do NOT work for improving the neck. At best, you’ll see transient improvement due to the inflammatory process, but it’s impossible for them to achieve a satisfactory and long-lasting result.

Why? Because they only create tension in the skin, but don’t correct muscular descent or submandibular gland herniation, which are almost always responsible for loss of neck definition.

Liposuction is a very effective treatment for eliminating excess fat.

However, to achieve good results, proper indication is fundamental: there should be no sagging (if there is, an empty skin pouch will remain) nor submandibular gland herniation (by removing superficial fat, the glands will become even more prominent).

That’s why it should be limited to young patients (without sagging) who only have a small excess of localised fat.

Although there’s a lot of marketing around Facetite, it’s radiofrequency-assisted liposuction: once liposuction is performed, heat is applied via a cannula that, in theory, should tighten skin and musculature.

Now, do you really believe that when there’s excess skin, it can disappear as if by magic?

Or that a cannula applying heat can correct a hernia or join two separated muscles?

Don’t be fooled…

Beyond facilitating liposuction, heat application only encourages the formation of intense fibrosis that will undoubtedly make surgery much more difficult when you decide to take the plunge.

And I speak from experience…

When the goal is to correct structure and achieve a visible and definitive result, surgery is the way. Specifically, a neck lift or cervicofacial lift.

Surgery undoubtedly constitutes the best option for treating necks with excess skin, muscular sagging, or submandibular gland herniation. Even though aesthetic medicine has advanced greatly in recent years, it’s not possible to work on these structures without surgery.

What about a mini-lift? Don’t be fooled by the name. However tempting it may sound, a mini-lift does NOT adequately address the neck. Want to know more about mini-lifts? Click here.