Ultherapy Korea Before and After Read as a Range

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Clinic galleries are curated, which is normal marketing but poor evidence. A published series is more useful because it reports everyone who finished, including the people who barely changed.

Kim, So and Ryu treated 19 Korean women and one man, aged 28 to 60, with a Korean-made HIFU device rather than Ultherapy itself, using a 4.5 mm probe and then a 3.0 mm probe (Medical Lasers, 2014). Seventeen completed the three-month check, and two experienced raters scored paired photos on a five-step scale running from little or no change to excellent improvement. The table below shows how those 17 people were spread.

In the same series, one woman had only the left side of her face treated. Because both halves share the same lighting, age, weight and day, the untreated side works as a built-in control, which is harder to stage than two photos taken months apart.

You are unlikely to be offered a half-face treatment, but the idea still helps. When a clinic shows a pair, ask whether anything else changed between the shots: weight, hair, makeup, head tilt or a second treatment. The fewer the differences, the more the pair tells you about the ultrasound.

Day explained in Research and Reports in Focused Ultrasound (2014) that the transducer focuses energy into small points below the surface, heating the dermis or the SMAS while tissue above and below the focal zone is spared. Heat makes collagen fibers contract and prompts new collagen to form, which is why change builds over weeks.

That mechanism tells you where to look. Deep passes aim at the support layer, so the jawline, the soft area under the chin and the brow are where a lift is usually judged. Shallower passes act on skin texture, which photographs poorly. A pair that shows smoother pores but the same jaw angle is telling you about the superficial pass, not the lift.

• Jawline: look at the edge from a three-quarter angle.
• Under the chin: compare the side profile with the head level.
• Brow: check the gap between the brow and the upper lid.
• Neck: look for fewer folds with the chin in the same position.

Common effects listed in Day's review are brief discomfort during treatment, temporary redness and swelling, and occasional bruising. In the Korean series, three of the 20 people had short-lived redness or swelling, and everyone returned to usual activities straight away.

A photo from the first few days can look puffier or tighter than the real result, so it says little about the lift. If redness, swelling or a bruise is still clearly visible after about two weeks, send a photo to the treating clinic.