The answer to that question really depends on the patient’s age. If the patient is relatively young and has very elastic skin, there are various nonsurgical treatment options available, but the most productive and most efficacious treatment would involve some sort of fat removal. Classically this is done via liposuction through an extremely small excision below the chin. This can easily be performed in the spa setting and we frequently perform these at Quintessa Medical Spa using just local anesthetic. There is very little downtime as I just place a pressure dressing overnight and this can be removed the following day. I recommend the patient wear an elastic sling in this area as much as possible for the first week and then they can essentially resume normal activities. Most patients do not have any visible bruising from this procedure and therefore, downtime is very minimal. There are newer lasers available that can not only liquify fat, but help to tighten the overlying skin. I have not found these to be horribly helpful in this area of the face and therefore I continue to perform relatively classic liposuction in this area as we get fantastic results with extremely low risk and I have not found that the lasers are helpful. Other non-surgical options for a double chin are going to be less effective, but there are various ways to tighten the skin in this area.
The most efficacious treatment available at this point in time appears to be Ultherapy, which is an ultrasound-based technology that can heat the deeper tissue using ultrasound waves.
This technology is very exciting due to the fact that it completely bypasses the overlying skin and thus creates no injury whatsoever to the skin, but only injures the deeper tissue and then collagen growth causes tightening of the area and visible results can be seen within approximately three months.
We are excited to have an Ultherapy device at Quintessa Medical Spa as we were one of the first ten facilities to obtain this device in the United States and will be one of twenty-five facilities in their phase one clinical release.
I would recommend contacting us for a consultation if you are interested in discussing Ultherapy or the minimally invasive liposuction.