The Growing Role of Plasma in Facial Rejuvenation

The Journal of the American Society of Plastic Surgeons has recently posted an interesting article about the evolving role of plasma in plastic surgery. 

Plasma, a platelet-rich fluid extracted from blood, is a concentrated delivery method of growth factors like VEGF and TGF-beta. It's been discovered that plasma-based growth factors can be used with topical application or injection to promote collagen growth and fibroblast activity, which can be useful in healing acne scars, removing pigmented skin marks, and decreasing wrinkles. 

Companies like SkinMedica have been offering pre-made growth factor serums that can be applied topically with noticeable improvement in facial wrinkles. This is an easy solution for patients looking for quick solutions to reverse aging. 

Nowadays, platelet rich plasma can also be extracted from the patient's own blood source and used in multiple ways to provide a personal growth factor treatment. Blood is removed from the patient and spun in a centrifuge. Then, the plasma is removed from the tube and can be applied via either injection into the skin or topical application (like a serum). The difficulty with these methods is that while injection shows better results in anti-aging and healing effects, it can be painful and has a healing process, neither of which occur with topical applications.

Doctors have discovered that a combination of microneedling and topical plasma application can provide more skin improvement than just plain topical plasma application without the pain and long healing times of plasma injection! Microneedles like the SkinPen can puncture the skin and allow for better absorption of topically applied plasma. This has been offering great results, with Chamata et. al. mentioning that

"In a split-face trial of microneedling with platelet-rich plasma compared to microneedling alone, significant improvement in appearance and quality of life was achieved in the combination group."

Overall, while plasma therapy undoubtedly improves pigmented skin marks, acne scars, and wrinkles, a lack of standardization in the community that uses plasma makes it difficult to measure exactly how helpful it is and which methods are most effective. In the future, I'm sure standardizations of the process will be developed and we will have a better idea of what results can be guaranteed with plasma treatment.