The in-demand ultrasound technology-based treatment now promises even faster treatment times and a more comfortable patient experience
My friends warned me it was going to hurt—like being slapped repeatedly, or having a dozen rubber bands snap against your face all at once. But they also insisted: no pain, no gain. So, armed with a healthy dose of trepidation, and the promise of a more lifted visage, I booked myself in for an Ultherapy Prime session at IDS Clinic, nestled in Novena Specialist Centre.
An evolved version of the original Ultherapy—a go-to ultrasound facelift treatment praised for its minimal downtime and consistent results—Ultherapy Prime builds on its predecessor’s success. It uses the same collagen-boosting technology, now refined to deliver more precise targeting for enhanced results.
Designed to treat areas most susceptible to gravity’s pull—the brows, cheeks, jawline, jowl, and neck—Ultherapy delivers focused ultrasound energy deep beneath the skin’s surface. This, in turn, stimulates natural collagen production, gradually lifting and tightening the skin over the months that follow, all without a single incision.
Ultherapy Prime, according to the doctor who administered my treatment, does exactly the same, but with the benefits of enhanced real-time imaging (MFU-V). Simply put, this means that the doctor can see the ultrasound image of your skin on the machine with greater clarity and, in turn, send the fibroblasts to jump start collagen production with high accuracy.
What this translates to, on the treatment table, is virtually zero discomfort. The requisite application of numbing cream prior to the treatment certainly helped. The sensation, if any, felt akin to a very weak tingling. No vicious slaps, no foreboding rubber bands. The enhanced precision blasts must have helped.
Post-treatment, the clinic told me that visible results would start to emerge in one to two months, with the full effect lasting up to a year. Naturally, I began scrutinising my reflection from the very next morning—an admittedly unscientific approach, and one that quickly gave way to indifference after a few weeks.
But a month later, while lunching with friends, one of them asked if I’d lost weight. Apparently, my face looked “smaller.” A few days after that, my wife affectionately observed that my “bulldog cheeks” had lifted. I’ll take that. And for as long as this collagen renaissance lasts, I intend to enjoy every taut minute of it.
