Speaker 1 (00:04):
Welcome to the Holistic and Scientific Podcast with board-certified plastic surgeon, Dr. Robert Whitfield, Austin's natural choice for plastic surgery and the expert in smart laser and energy treatments.

Dr. Robert Whitfield (00:20):
Today we're going to talk about your neck. So what's bothering you about your neck? The fact that you've been in front of a camera for the past year and a half, the fact that you may have eaten too much for the past year and a half or drank too much. I've certainly done both of those things. My vice has been tequila, specifically Dobel Tequila. So the problem is, it's not been good in my house.

Dr. Robert Whitfield (00:39):
I see a lot of people unhappy with the appearance of their neck and what options can we provide them. Non-invasive options we have with Evoke. Evoke treats basically about four by two inches of the double chin area, if you will. And so for mild to moderate cases, you can use that device in a non-invasive way once a week for six weeks, about 45 minutes a treatment session to get a result. Works very well.

Dr. Robert Whitfield (01:06):
If you step it up and you need to take care of a larger fatty area, or there's more skin laxity, then we have to add something in addition to that Evoke treatment. We can do something pretty novel, pretty clever. It's called the Zoom Lift. Isn't that fitting? So it's a suture suspension technique done through a series of two millimeter openings. And so why is two millimeters important? Well, if you don't make that two millimeter opening larger, it won't leave a visible scar, and nobody wants a visible scar. So we can tighten the whole neck area and decrease the double chin, take care of the bands in the neck, the grimace muscles, if you will. And that can be done with the Zoom Lift.

Dr. Robert Whitfield (01:49):
Now, what's important is what you add to that treatment. So if you want to tighten someone's cheek tissue, if you want to tighten the zones of the neck, I can add FaceTite to it. FaceTite's a bipolar radio frequency treatment. Think of an electrified pair of tweezers. One limb of the tweezer under the skin, one above the skin, use a little ultrasound gel to protect the skin. And it tightens that entire fibroceptal network, shrinks it down. If you still have skin laxity or crepiness once all of that's done and every thing's closed, we'll go over it and we'll do microneedling. So microneedling can be done with Fractora or Morpheus8. And when you're numb, you want me to go ahead and bring everything out of the toy box and take care of that for you. Those combinations will give you, basically, a nonsurgical neck lift.

Dr. Robert Whitfield (02:42):
Now, the per person who has too much skin laxity, too much bulk in their neck, may in fact want a surgical neck lift. Now, I don't do isolated neck lifts. I do them with lower third facelifts or full facelifts. We want to treat the whole facial aesthetic as a unit. We don't want to have asymmetry between areas, so if we treat a neck, we'll treat the lower third. I do those as face and neck lifts under local in the office, or in combination with a Zoom Lift at the end of a face, neck lift. That way you get a better sharper angle. You can decrease the downtime of a facelift by adding the Zoom Lift to it at the end, by not opening the neck, just keeping the neck closed and tightening it with the Zoom Lift.

Dr. Robert Whitfield (03:29):
When we talk about suture suspension, I want a suture in this setting to have two ends that I can then tie and tighten. This is the opposite of a bidirectional suture used in a thread lift, where you put a needle in a face and you pull, and that suspends the face. Here, we're going to wrap everything around and then come back around and have two ends. And so when we tighten, it's like a purse string effect here, and that's the suture suspension. It's a 4-0 Ethilon suture that stays in place that holds it. There's five-year FDA clearance for it, versus a thread lift, which is usually done with PDO suture. You'll get one to two years out of it.

Dr. Robert Whitfield (04:15):
But the big difference between how the appearance of a neck lift looks like with a Zoom Lift relative to a thread lift is use a fiber optic light, and you can always set the depth according to the light. So if you're tilted up, it's too bright. If you're tilted down, it's too weak. You'll always know where you are in the neck, because the light is allowing you to travel through the tissues carefully and evenly. When you put a suture that's connected to the thread lift technique through the face, it's not easy to control the depth. So complaints about thread lifts will be dimpling or grooving. And that's basically because you don't have great control of it. So if you want consistency with the result, which I always want for all of my clients, I use the Zoom Lift because I can set the depth every single time.

Dr. Robert Whitfield (05:07):
The downtime for a Zoom Lift is actually very easy. Zoom Lift, we put you in the soft cervical collar, it looks like a little whiplash collar, and a little head wrap. You wear the head wrap for two days and then the collar for the next seven to 10 days. And the only limitation on activity is tilting your head down or up too much, because that puts too much stress on the suture suspension. Heavy lifting or exercise that causes relatively high increases in heart rate and blood pressure to be avoided just to decrease bleeding, like any treatment. And that would just be for the first week. Walking's fine, riding a stationary bike's fine. All those things are okay.

Dr. Robert Whitfield (05:47):
So basically, everybody wants to know the price of these treatments. A surgical facelift can range usually between $20,000 and $30,000 for us. A Zoom Lift starts about $4,500, and depending on what we add to it, will end up between $7,000 and $10,000 normally. In summary, there's three ways to take care of the neck now. If in fact, you want a non-invasive approach, use Evoke with our chin applicator once a week for six weeks. If you want a minimally invasive approach, I'll curate the proper techniques for you to get the best response either with the Zoom Lift, Zoom Lift and FaceTite, or combinations of microneedling. And of course, if I feel like it's beyond that, we'll discuss options that are surgical, like a mini-lift or a full facelift. To learn more, please go to my website, DrRobertWhitfield.com, to look at videos, before and afters, and always look at the show notes.

Speaker 1 (06:35):
Take a screenshot of this podcast episode with your phone and show it at your consultation or appointment or mention the promo code PODCAST, to receive $25 off any service or product of $50 or more. Dr. Robert Whitfield is a board-certified plastic surgeon located in Austin, Texas, near 360 and Walsh Tarlton in Westlake. To learn more, go to DrRobertWhitfield.com or follow Dr. Rob on Instagram @drrobertwhitfield. Links to learn more about Dr. Rob's smart procedures and anything else mentioned on today's show are available in the show notes. The Holistic and Scientific Podcast is a production of The Axis. T-H-E-A-X-I-S.I-O