SARASOTA - Seven months ago, a Sarasota plastic surgeon became one of the first doctors in the world to use a special fiber optic laser as thin as six strands of human hair to melt fat in his patient’s necks, chins, nose folds and jowls.
Dr. J. David Holcomb’s work on 75 patients since December 2008, and the contouring and softening results he has achieved for them using a laser with an unusual wave length, has caught the eye of plastic surgeons worldwide.
Holcomb and laser manufacturer Lutronic Corporation coined the phrase “AccuLift” for the procedure that Holcomb does in his office in about 90 minutes with local anesthetic, tiny incisions, no patient down-time and at roughly half the cost of other treatments.
The results the doctor has gotten are so dramatic that he is setting up a training program at the Holcomb Facial Plastic Surgery Center at One School Ave., Sarasota — to be called The Institute for Integrated Aesthetics — so other plastic surgeons can learn his procedure.
“Dr. Holcomb is an innovator,” said Dr. Mark Tager, a California-based plastic surgeon. “He is constantly looking for ways of solving problems where there was no previous solution. This is a paradigm shift. Before Dr. Holcomb, we always thought, ‘Fill, fill, fill.’ “
Before AccuLift, patients who were not pleased that their jowls were droopy, their nasolabial fold areas were heavy and their necks and chin were thickened had costly options.
They could consider filler injections, which can run $3,000 to $5,000 per syringe, to smooth out the nasolabial folds.
They would also need to add some face and neck lifting for the jowls, chin and neck, which could run $5,000 each.
Not only that, the filler injections for the nose folds need replacing every six months or so.
But Holcomb, who is on the medical advisory board of Lutronic Corporation, discovered that a 600 micron-thick laser made by the company, which was being used for other applications, had the capability of liquefying fat with high heat without injuring the surrounding tissue.
The AccuLift procedure costs $5,000-$6,000, and can include the jowls, neck and nose folds, Holcomb said.
“Lutronics harnessed the wave length,” Holcomb said in his office at the Kane Plaza, where he occupies the entire eighth floor. “If you have a laser that generates too much heat, it can melt fat but also blow a hole in the face due to the spread of heat. This laser doesn’t do that.”
“It looks like a piece of angel hair pasta,” Michele Shields, Holcomb’s scrub nurse on all 75 of his procedures, said recently of the laser. “It has a yellow tint. It needs a special plug because it doesn’t even use regular current.”
As Shields watches, Holcomb makes an incision near where the work is to be done and guides the laser using a light at the tip.
As the laser delivers the wave length of energy, the fat melts into a liquid and actually runs out like tears.
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