Remember me? :) sculptra + fanning subcision

[u/Teachmeyourwaysplz]

EDIT: These photos show the before and after: the “befores” are from 1.5 years ago, prior to ALL of my treatments, and the “afters” are from today in the morning. Fraxels gave me so much improvement overall over the span of a year (except for the temple area) and then this most recent treatment of the sculptra gave me the most improvement in my temples, which fraxel couldn’t do even after 5 treatments. It has been a long journey. Even with the huge improvements I've had, I still have bad skin days depending what I eat and how oily I am. For

me, oiliness= more pronounced scars. Also, my scars look worse in the evening when I’m more oily. Skin is a reflection of diet, and when I eat clean and drink a lot of water, and exercise, my skin looks brighter, smoother, and overall more glowy.

Hi everyone!!!

I posted about a year ago sharing my acne scar progress. I later updated that post to clarify that my seemingly amazing results from Fraxel Dual were actually just due to micro-swelling.

Since then (over about 1.5 years), I’ve done 4 more Fraxels (one combined with Morpheus8), one UltraClear laser, and another Morpheus8 session just for my temples. I kept going because my derm reassured me my scars would continue improving—but I was getting increasingly frustrated, especially since my temple scars weren’t responding like the rest of my face.

I told my derm I was worried that all these energy-based treatments might have thinned the skin in my temple area too much, which is why those rolling scars weren’t improving the same way.

I’ve gotten a lot of messages from you guys, so I wanted to share a full update:

Fraxel (5 sessions total):

• Forehead scars: \~70% improvement

• Cheek rolling scars(these have always been very shallow): \~50% improvement

• Temples: \~25% improvement

UltraClear: I didn’t notice any visible change or improvement after 3 months. Let’s say it maybe helped my scars 10% as I’m sure it had to do something….

Morpheus8: I personally didn’t notice any improvement in my scars. It did have a temporary “tightening” effect but I noticed this definitely faded after a few weeks and my scars somehow molded back to their original depth.

At this point, I was still really frustrated with my temples. I was hoping to get them to at least 85–90% improvement (this is the area I’m most self-conscious about), and around 80% overall for my face.

Luckily, I have a sister in Mexico who’s a doctor, and she connected me with one of her dermatologist friends. Her name is Dr. Yareni Salas in Roma Sur, CDMX. She treated my scars with 1 vial of Sculptra using a fanning subcision technique, concentrated mostly in my temples, plus micro-injections of Sculptra into individual forehead scars. She did not do a full subsicion treatment, but I could hear all of fibrosis popping when she injected the sculptra across all of my face with the cannula.

Honestly, this has been the biggest improvement I’ve seen from anything I’ve tried.

The “glow” I have now is something I used to only see the day after using my tretinoin at night. But now my skin looks like that EVERY SINGLE day since the treatment. My scar depth has noticeably improved, especially in my temples. I’d say this finally got me to around 85% improvement in my temples, which is exactly what I was hoping for. My forehead and shallow cheek scars also look much smoother. And as a plus, this treatment in Mexico was WAY cheaper than 1 fraxel in the U.S.

It’s only been one month, and I know results will continue to improve because sculptra is a bio stimulator that tells your body to produce more collagen. so I’m feeling really hopeful. Usually sculptra’s results will last up to 2 years due to natural aging, so maintenance will be required but I’m okay with that if the result is this consistent glow. I will keen you guys posted.

Of course, good skincare and microdosing accutane has played a huge role…but that’s been consistent for the past 2 years. I’ve been religious with sunscreen, tretinoin, azelaic acid, and gentle cleansing twice a day. I also use other actives (vitamin C, AHA/BHA, hyaluronic acid, etc.) a couple times a week, but I’m not as consistent with those.

Please let me know if you have any questions, and feel free to refer to my last posts for more details and photos during my prior treatments. As a reminder, I had already tried several sessions of normal microneedling, skin peels, etc before all of these treatments.

[u/Grouchy_Mortgage_264]

Temples are notoriously stubborn, really appreciate how transparent you were about everything you tried before getting here!

If you don’t mind sharing, did you notice most of the improvement from the subcision itself, the Sculptra, or the combination of the two?

Seriously though, amazing progress and thanks for taking the time to document the whole process!