IMCAS celebrated the 17th anniversary in aesthetic medicine. Over 350 expert faculty, over 4500 visitors and 200 exhibiting and sponsoring companies participated in the congress this year. The main sponsor was Galderma, the big absentee, to everyone’s amazement, was Allergan.
On the first day, the popular and innovative live injection cadaver workshop took place. It was led by Benjamin Ascher, MD, Philippe Kestemont, MD, and Marina Landau, MD. The aim of the training event was to improve the injection technique of neurotoxin, fillers and fat or even sutures.
The current trends of the IMCAS Beauty Congress in Paris of 2015 clearly showed again that the non-invasive methods, especially the nature-identical filler materials namely the hyaluronic acid (HAC) and the “thread lifting” with various absorbable “threads” such as lactic acid threads, are in the foreground.
Thus, Europe is once again enriched by several crosslinked fillers in the HAC area (Uma Jeunesse Ultra® with DXN technology from Great Britain, Revofil from Korea, Hyaluronica® from Vital Esthetique, Dermafill®) and by several studies.
Lasting result with volumizing filler
Worth mentioning was a study by Sergio Talarico, MD, and colleagues from Brazil. In their multicenter study of 60 patients with an average age of 54 years, they were able to show that a lasting result of up to 18 months can be achieved with a volumizing filler, especially in the midface area. The study was conducted by Galderma. The filler used was Emervel® Volume.
Calcium additionally stimulates collagen
Another interesting filler is a crosslinked hyaluronic acid filler in combination with 1% calcium hydroxylapatite, which is supposed to stimulate additional collagen through the calcium and thus bring even longer-lasting results (HyaLine® 24/26/28 from Scientech Corporation in Italy).
Thread lifting
Things have been somewhat quieter in the Platelet Rich Plasma area. On the other hand, research in the field of thread lifts is all the more intensive. Here, too, there is a clear trend towards non-invasive lifting with a short downtime. There is now an almost confusing variety of degradable suture lifts (lactic acid, polydoxanone, etc.) and meso threads with suture material that is sometimes degraded after two years, but sometimes after six to eight months. The results in the area of Jaw-Line and Midface-Lift are quite impressive.
Ultherapy penetrates deepest
However, for atrophic sun-damaged skin, the discussed methods are certainly not a good option. In fact, there is a clear trend towards fractionalCO2 laser therapies, which are in competition with tightening methods using microneedling with multipolar radiofrequency or with the deepest of all effective devices: focused ultrasound or so-called Ultherapy, which received the New Beauty Award in 2014.
Source: IMCAS Congress, January 29-February 1, 2015, Paris.
