Original Article By Radiance Medspa Staff.
When it comes to dermal fillers, whether you're getting a product from Juvederm, Restylane, or Sculptra, injection is par for the course. To get the product in, the medical practitioner must pierce the skin. While sharp needles are excellent for puncturing, it turns out, they are not as good at distributing product. Usually, administering product through a sharp needle means that multiple injections are required to complete one treatment. Although most injectors continue to use sharp needles to provide dermal fillers, typically leading to some level of post-treatment bruising and swelling, there is a better way to administer injections, and it's called a cannula.
The cannula is a blunt needle with a round tip. Not a good bet for puncturing the skin, a cannula offers many benefits for distributing product. The cannula's blunt tip goes around vessels beneath the skin instead of stabbing through them, so this long needle can move around, distributing product smoothly and evenly through one entry point. In fact, you can fill an entire cheek with just one puncture. Because the cannula moves gently through the tissues and does not need to be pulled out and reinserted elsewhere, patients experience significantly less bruising and swelling than with dermal filler injections via a sharp needle.
At Radiance Medspa Avon, we use the cannula for dermal fillers whenever appropriate. Although it requires an extra step because the sole entry point must be created with a sharp needle first, and using two needles on each patient also adds a bit to our expense, we find the success of treatment and patient comfort and appearance afterwards to be well worth it.