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Facial Rejuvenation

Jan 18, 2024 | Facial Rejuvenation

Now that the Dow Jones and S&P 500 have set new records, it’s the perfect time to start planning the big comeback for the brand of “you.” Facial rejuvenation should be at the top of your list because nothing provides a higher return on investment. If eyes are the windows to the soul, your face is your persona’s business card.

Your face should stand to benefit most from the many available rejuvenation therapies. Here’s why. Many facial rejuvenation treatments are designed to get connective tissue cells, called “fibroblasts,” to secrete a complex group of polysaccharides and proteins that create collagen, which gives your skin its shape and elasticity while supporting blood vessels that permeate it. Collagen tissue is maintained by a mechanical tension with skin cells.

While skin naturally deteriorates with age, it’s sunlight exposure that inhibits the ability of fibroblasts to produce collagen. That explains why hands, face, neck, and the upper chest area suffer more than unexposed skin, and also why light-pigmented people wrinkle more readily than others.

Whether you would like to remove a few wrinkles using a “neurotoxin” (botulinum toxin type A) — the best-known example being Botox — or would like to fight the loss of collagen with a facial filler or Intense Pulsed Light (IPL) treatment, innovative rejuvenation technologies continue the reinvent facial rejuvenation.

The American Society of Plastic Surgeons (ASPS) publishes an annual statistical report that provides an analysis of cosmetic procedures performed each year, broken down by surgical and minimally invasive cosmetic procedures. The latest ASPS report, released in April 2021, lists the top five surgical procedures of 2020:

  • Nose reshaping (rhinoplasty) – Popularly known as a “nose job,” nose reshaping was the no. 1 surgical treatment performed in the U.S. in 2020 with 352,555 procedures. The segment is being driven by innovative new materials, like alloplastic implants.
  • Eyelid surgery (blepharoplasty) – Whether excising muscles from the upper eyelid or removing fat from puffy lower eyelids, blepharoplasty was the second most popular cosmetic surgery in the U.S. in 2020, with 352,112 procedures performed.
  • Facelift (rhytidectomy) – Our Instagram world is driving interest in facial rejuvenation, lifting, pardon the pun, facelift procedures to 234,374 in 2020.
  • Neck lift (platysmaplasty) – A beautiful face and a turkey neck just don’t go together, so 160,235 underwent a neck lift procedure in 2020.
  • Cheek implant – Fallen cheeks are no longer something you have to live with. And, at least 108,189 decided that enough was enough during the pandemic.

The facial rejuvenation market is being propelled by a shift towards minimally-invasive cosmetic procedures, with the top five shown below:

  • Botulinum toxin A (Botox, Dysport, Xeomin) – We are still having many Botox parties with 4.4 million procedures performed in 2020, although that figure is down significantly from the 6.1 million performed in 2012. More importantly, we’re no longer exclusively married to the Botox brand.
  • Soft tissue fillers – Besides botulinum there has been a solution for wrinkles since 2003 when the FDA approved the use of Allergan’s Restylane for smoothing wrinkles and enhancing lips, which resulted in a whole new rejuvenation category, popularly known as “facial fillers.” Most dermal fillers contain hyaluronic acid gel, which is a naturally occurring collagen found in both humans and cows. In 2020, 3.4 million soft tissue treatments were performed.
  • Laser skin resurfacing – Also often called lasabrasion, laser peel, or laser vaporization, laser skin resurfacing uses a short, concentrated pulsating laser light to target skin irregularities, removing skin layer by layer. A total of 997,245 laser skin resurfacing procedures were performed in 2020.
  • Chemical peel (chemexfoliation) – In a chemical peel procedure, a chemical solution is applied to the skin to remove top layers, revealing a more youthful skin underneath. Also known as dermapeeling, 931,473 chemical peel procedures were performed in 2020.
  • Intense pulsed light (IPL) treatment – Also known as photofacial, IPL treatments improve the color and texture of your skin without surgery. Some 827,409 procedures were performed in 2020.

If all of these figures seem rather low, compared to the 331 million U.S. population, there may be a reason for that. While the ASPS represents more than 7,000 physician members and comprises 93% of all board-certified U.S. plastic surgeons, the latest 2020 study only had a 2% response rate, based on 463 physicians who returned a questionnaire distributed to more than 24,600 American Board of Medical Specialties (ABMS) board-certified physicians.

Those 463 responses were used to extrapolate to the entire population of 24,600 board-certified physicians “most likely to perform cosmetic and reconstructive plastic surgery procedures.” A competing plastic surgery organization, the Aesthetic Society, also provides annual industry statistics based on its 2,200 members. Its surgical and non-surgical findings tend to be even lower than those of the ASPS. 🤔

Please bookmark this page and join us as we build this Facial Rejuvenation index in realtime, which encompasses these Fountain of Youth topics:

Facial Aesthetics
Eyelid Surgery (Blepharoplasty)
Face Lift (Rhytidectomy)
Neck Lift (Platysmaplasty)
Nose Reshaping (Rhinoplasty)

Skin Revitalization
Chemical Peel (Chemexfoliation)
Dermabrasion
Injectables (Dermal Fillers and Neurotoxins)
Laser Skin Resurfacing
Light Energy Therapy (BBL, IPL, and PDT)
Liquid Nitrogen (Cryotherapy)
Microblading
Microneedling
Platelet Rich Plasma (PRP; aka Vampire Facial)
Radiofrequency Ablation (RFA)
Retinoids

Skin Care
Acne
Cosmeceuticals
Facials
Keratolytics
Makeup
Moisturizers
Sunscreens
Tanning

Michael Tchong

Michael Tchong

Founder, Author, Adjunct Professor, Futurist

Michael is the founder of Toolhacker LLC, an innovation speaker and adjunct professor at the University of San Francisco, futurist, and author of “Ubertrends — How Trends And Innovation Are Transforming Our Future.” He is also the founder of four ahead-of-the-wave startups, including MacWEEK, Atelier Systems, CyberAtlas, and ICONOCAST.