PDO Thread Lifts in Montreal

During your consultation, a physician lifts the tissue by hand to see how far it moves, then marks the anchor points, the direction of each thread and the type each one will be.

After the area is prepared and numbed, a fine cannula carries each thread into the layer just under the skin. The barbs catch the tissue, it is drawn along the planned line, and the tension is compared with the other side before the thread end is trimmed.

The session takes 30 to 90 minutes depending on the area, and most people go back to work the same day. Expect swelling, tenderness and a tight pulling feeling for a week or two, and light bruising that can take 7 to 14 days to clear.

The lift is visible as you leave. Collagen forms along each thread over the next two to three months, and the result lasts 12 to 18 months. Results vary from person to person, which is why the plan is set at a medical consultation.

Most patients describe pressure and a pulling sensation rather than pain. A topical anesthetic cream is applied first, and a local anesthetic is injected at each entry point and along the path the thread will take.

Tenderness and an ache when you open your mouth wide or turn your head are usual for up to two weeks afterwards, and are managed with a mild painkiller. Tell us if the pain is severe or increasing rather than settling.

No incision is made, so there is no surgical scar and no stitches to remove. The risks that remain are those of a procedure done through small punctures.

The common effects are swelling, tenderness and bruising at the insertion points. Less often, a small dimple or pucker forms where a thread is anchored, a thread end becomes palpable or visible, or an area feels numb or prickly along a thread for a few weeks.

Infection is uncommon but possible, since each entry point is a small wound. Asymmetry between the two sides is corrected by adjusting the weaker side at the follow-up rather than by adding threads on the day.

An area that turns hot, red and swollen after the first few days, pain that is severe and increasing, or a thread end coming through the skin should be seen right away.

Between 12 and 18 months. The suture itself is absorbed within a few months; what holds the result after that is the collagen formed along its track.

Skin that still has elasticity holds a lift longer, which is why a thread lift generally does more for someone whose tissue has only begun to descend than for someone with marked, heavy sagging.

The lift releases gradually rather than stopping, and a touch-up placed before it has fully let go usually needs fewer threads. Results vary from person to person.

From $650 to $2,500 per treatment area. Where you fall in that range depends on the area, on how many threads it needs and on which type each one is.

Finer threads are used on the face, the neck and the brow; longer, stronger ones on the abdomen, the arms and the knees. A second area is priced separately.

This price applies to the treatment described on this page and is valid while it is shown here. A first visit includes a physician consultation of $130, credited toward treatment from $500. Taxes are extra.

The first week matters, because the tissue is still gripping the threads. Do not touch or wash the treated area for 12 hours, and keep movement in it to a minimum for 24 hours: no rubbing, scratching or shaving.

Keep heat away for 48 hours: no pool, sauna or spa. Ice gently for swelling, and apply arnica if you were given it.

Sleep on your back with your head slightly raised for the first week, so side pressure does not shift a thread before it is held.

Leave strenuous exercise for one to two weeks, and avoid facials, massage and dental work for two weeks. All three stretch the treated area strongly. Your own instructions are given at the clinic and depend on the area treated.

Polydioxanone, the same absorbable material used for surgical sutures for decades. It contains no drug, no gel and nothing of animal origin.

The body breaks it down into water and carbon dioxide over several months, so nothing is left behind. The thread is passed through a fine cannula, not sewn with a needle and left in place.

No. A surgical facelift removes excess skin and repositions deeper layers through incisions, under a surgeon’s care. A thread lift removes nothing: it repositions tissue through small punctures and holds it with absorbable sutures.

That makes it a different treatment rather than a smaller version of the same one. The change is measured in millimetres, it lasts 12 to 18 months instead of years, and there is no scar and no general anesthetic.

If your tissue has descended heavily and there is a large excess of loose skin, a suture cannot carry that weight, and a surgical opinion is the honest answer. A physician will tell you so at the consultation rather than place threads that will not hold.

Not normally. The thread sits below the skin, in the fatty layer, and is too fine to show through.

In the first weeks you may feel a line of firmness along a thread, or a small pucker where it is anchored. Both usually settle as the swelling goes and the tissue relaxes around the suture.

Occasionally a thread end stays palpable under thin skin, or works its way toward the surface. It is trimmed or removed in a short appointment; it is not something to live with.

No. The thread does not stretch the tissue; it holds it in a position it was already in a few years ago.

As the suture is absorbed, the collagen formed along its track takes over, and that is what keeps the result after the thread has gone. When the collagen slowly gives way, the area returns toward where it was before treatment rather than past it.

What does continue is ageing itself, which is why a touch-up is planned rather than waiting for the lift to be fully gone.

Yes, and it is a common plan, because the three treat different things. Threads move tissue that has descended, fillers replace volume that has gone, and wrinkle relaxers soften lines that movement creates.

When they are combined, the threads are usually placed first and the volume judged afterwards, once the tissue sits where it will stay. Adding filler before a lift often means adding it in the wrong place.

Each is priced separately: threads by the area treated, fillers by the syringe, relaxers by the unit.

It depends on the area and on how far the tissue has moved, not on a fixed number per face. A jawline is usually treated with a few barbed threads per side; a brow takes fewer; the abdomen takes considerably more.

How they are anchored and in which direction they pull matters more than the count. Adding threads to a poorly chosen vector does not improve a lift.

A physician sets the number at your consultation, after lifting the tissue by hand to see how far it travels and where it wants to go.

Age is not what decides it; the state of the tissue is. What a thread needs is something firm to anchor into and skin with enough elasticity to follow when the tissue is moved.

Early descent (a jawline just starting to blur, a brow a little lower than it was) is where threads do the most, and that can be anywhere from the thirties onward.

Where sagging is heavy and the skin has lost its spring, a thread has little to hold and the lift will not last. A physician will say so at the consultation.

Leave strenuous exercise for one to two weeks: hard effort pulls on the threads before collagen has formed around them. Walking is fine from the next day.

Flying is fine after 48 hours. Keep heat away for the same period: no pool, sauna or spa.

For a wedding, a photograph or anything you cannot move, book at least a month ahead. Bruising can take 7 to 14 days to clear, and the pulled look of the first weeks softens into the real result over two to three months.

Yes, where the problem is skin that has slackened: the abdomen after a pregnancy or a weight loss, the inner arm above the elbow, the skin just above the knee.

The threads used are longer and stronger than the facial ones, and the result is more a firming of the skin surface than the clear repositioning a face gets, because there is more tissue and less to anchor into.

Threads do not reduce fat and they do not treat cellulite. If what you can pinch is a pocket of fat rather than loose skin, a different treatment is the right one, and a physician will tell you which at the consultation.