How Do PRP Injections Help the Under-Eyes?

So today I have a beautiful patient here with me that's interested in PRP injections for the under-eyes. This helps with multiple things: if you have a little bit of hollowness, a little bit of crepiness, even if the skin is thin enough to show the underlying abnormalities, like if there's a little bit of puffiness or fat pad herniation. So I'm going to have my patient lean back a little bit, and eyes closed or open is fine. And she's already been numbing for about 30 minutes, so she'll feel next to nothing.

So for my injections, I do a little poke. This is a 30 gauge needle. We've already prepped the PRP, and I'm just doing a little tiny blub, almost like a TB injection. This allows the PRP to diffuse into the dermis, which is where the collagen lives and what we're hoping to stimulate. How's your comfort level? Isn't this great? So patients feel next to nothing.

Now, side effects of this procedure are limited. We're using her own PRP, so there's no allergic reaction or anything like that that can occur. The under-eye is prone to bruising, so that's a major side effect, and then obviously, as you can see, swelling, which lasts for a couple of hours, but then within the next day it can still be a little swollen. She's doing great.

We've almost completely filled up this area, and because we have a little bit more PRP, I'm going to go a tiny bit lower to get that mid-face tear trough junction, which is where the tear trough line of hollowness occurs, and what we fill with filler. All right, so now we're going to do the other side. She's doing great.

Now, most people, as compared to filler injections, need multiple treatments of this. I usually recommend four to six treatments, each separated by a month, and then maintenance twice a year, or every six months. I have some patients that respond really well and sometimes only do a couple of treatments, but most really do need the four to six to get the maximum collagen stimulation, and therefore the maximum results.

So the results are permanent, because we're stimulating your body's natural ability to produce collagen. The results stay until your body undergoes the natural collagen degradation process, and that's why we do the maintenance treatment. She's doing great. She may not have any bruising. Back to that tear trough mid-face junction, which, as you can see, is a little bit less obvious on this side. And we're done.