How does Renuvion tighten skin? 85°C and 0.04 seconds

Sagging isn’t a problem of the skin layer alone. Under the skin, fibrous tissue connecting the skin to the fascia spreads out like a mesh and holds the skin in place. With age or after a lot of fat loss, this tissue loosens, and the skin pulls away from the tissue beneath it and sags.

Heat is needed to make this fibrous tissue contract. When collagen is heated, the bonds between its molecules break, and as it cools they bind together again, shrinking the tissue in the process. The challenge is temperature and time. Radiofrequency and laser devices that send heat in from the skin surface need to keep the tissue under the skin at 45 to 65°C for more than 2 minutes for collagen to contract enough. During that time the skin surface heats up too, so the surface temperature has to be watched constantly, with repeated pauses.

Renuvion works differently. A thin handpiece is placed directly under the skin, in the same layer where liposuction is done. At its tip, helium gas passes over an electrode carrying radiofrequency energy and turns into plasma. The surrounding tissue is heated in two ways: by the heat released as the plasma forms, and by the heat of the radiofrequency energy flowing through it.

Tissue heated this way reaches about 80 to 90°C. According to research, at this temperature collagen contracts in 0.04 seconds. Because the handpiece keeps moving, the heat doesn’t stay in one spot and quickly spreads into the surrounding area. So while the tissue under the skin is heated, the skin surface doesn’t go above 41°C. There is also less need to pause while checking the surface temperature.

There’s a reason for using helium, too. Helium is a gas that doesn’t react with other substances and doesn’t burn. In medicine, it has long been used in respiratory treatment, MRI cooling and laparoscopic surgery, among other things. Renuvion turns this helium into plasma so it can heat tissue evenly with relatively little energy.

However, because an instrument goes under the skin, unlike lifting treatments done from the skin surface, there is swelling and bruising, and some recovery time. Contraction begins right after treatment, but it takes 6 to 9 months for new collagen to form and the result to settle. That’s why the examination comes before the device. We first determine whether the sagging comes from fat or from loose skin, and use Renuvion only where it’s needed.

References

Shridharani SM, et al. The Safety of Contraction of Subcutaneous Tissue Following Liposuction Procedures. Aesthet Surg J Open Forum, 2024. doi:10.1093/asjof/ojad112

Ruff PG, et al. Safety and Efficacy of Renuvion Helium Plasma to Improve the Appearance of Loose Skin in the Neck and Submental Region. Aesthet Surg J, 2023. doi:10.1093/asj/sjad055

Berganza CJ, Zhang JH. The role of helium gas in medicine. Med Gas Res, 2013;3:18.