Sculptra® Aesthetic

A young face has fullness and roundness in the cheeks, under the eyes, in the lips and around the mouth. This fullness allows light to reflect without much shadowing and gives the face a vibrant appearance. With the loss of fullness, the skin looks drawn and hollow. This hollowness produces darker shadows causing an aged look.

Sculptra® is quickly becoming a popular option for restoring a more youthful, vibrant look by increasing the volume in the face. It is therefore called a “volumizer”. Unlike other fillers, Sculptra® stimulates your body’s own collagen, giving natural, subtle, and long-term results.

Sculptra® (poly-L-lactic acid) is a new FDA approved, non-invasive way to restore the volume in depressed areas of your face such as skin creases, wrinkles, and folds that result from natural aging. It is a safe, synthetic, and biocompatible material derived from fruit acids that is injected below the surface of the skin to create a fuller, more youthful appearance. It is unique in that it provides a gradual, but significant, increase in skin thickness by stimulating the body to produce more of its own collagen. Sculptra® is also known as the “facelift in a bottle”, and is rapidly becoming a favorite cosmetic option.

Sculptra® differs from other fillers because it causes the body to produce its own collagen, resulting in a more natural-looking, youthful appearance. When injected, Sculptra® stimulates your fibroblasts to produce new collagen, increasing the fullness and firmness of your skin. The process is gradual, and the effects can last 2 years or more. It is used to fill and re-contour areas where collagen and the body’s fat have diminished with age.

Sculptra® is injected into the skin in the same way as other fillers. It is placed in those areas where volume loss is visible, in a manner of seeding under the skin. The body begins to produce collagen in the areas where the Sculptra® particles have been placed, and over a period of time the skin builds and thickens to restore the lost volume.

In general, Sculptra® treatments consist of a simple series of two to three sessions done 4-6 weeks apart. Visible results appear naturally and progressively after each treatment session.

Immediately after the injections, there will be a temporary fullness in the face, which will then decrease to pre-treatment levels. Over the next 6-8 weeks, the skin thickness will gradually increase in a subtle way.

Because you are building your own collagen under the skin, the effects of Sculptra® are long term. FDA studies spanning two years still show effects of the correction.

Sculptra® is used for increasing volume of depressed areas in the face, particularly the temples, eye rings, cheeks, nasolabial folds, marionette lines and chin. Sculptra® can be used by the doctor to ‘sculpt’ your face by restoring its natural contours and smoothing out wrinkles, creases and folds.

Yes. Sculptra® is a safe, non-invasive procedure that has been used in the cosmetic field since 1999 in 30 countries. The product is highly biocompatible and biodegradable. Sculptra® is made from a material called poly-L-lactic acid, which has been widely used for over 30 years in dissolvable sutures and many types of implants.

Any type of injection involves the risk of infection. Serious side effects can occur if the practitioner is inexperienced or unauthorized to perform this procedure. When injections are performed by a trained physician like Dr. Prasad, side effects are generally temporary and minimal, but can range from redness to slight bruising, bleeding, small bumps, tenderness, pain or swelling.