Tixel®

After a medical consultation by Dr Ching to assess your suitability, you can book the treatment. The treatment is relatively painless. Usually, no anaesthetic is needed, but a quick-acting effective local anaesthetic cream can be applied to those patients that request it.

The skin must be cleaned correctly before treatment, with no makeup (including mascara) left on the skin surface. Before the procedure, your skin will be cleansed again with an alcohol-based product. Once the machine has reached the correct operating temperature, the treatment can begin.

The hot metal plate (1cmx1cm) in size, packed with tiny pyramidal shapes, is applied to your skin for a miniscule period, which can be between 6 to 18 milliseconds.

Each touch occurs so quickly that the hot metal plate would have been withdrawn even before your nerves can register the heat. A full-face treatment will require your skin to be touched by this metal plate about 300 times.

Treatment of the entire face takes from 15 to 20 minutes to complete.

1. The effects of a Tixel® treatment will differ according to the settings used.
The Ablative treatment (contact time of 12 mS and above) gives the best scar treatment and skin tightening results. The skin will develop slight crusting that can take roughly one week to clear. However, this crusting can be covered with suitable makeup after two days. Patients may only need a weekend to hide away if they do not feel confident in meeting others. The result of the ablative treatment will be similar to a deep chemical peel or fractional CO2 laser resurfacing treatment. Often this treatment is combined with facial surgery, such as a facelift.

2. Non-Ablative treatment (contact time of 8 mS to 10 mS)
This treatment can give the same skin tightening result as the ablative treatment but will require more procedures. This setting is suitable for patients who cannot take any time off to recover. The skin tightening result of non-ablative therapy will be similar to a medium-depth chemical peel but without the recovery time associated with a chemical peel.

3. “Open-Channel” treatment (contact time of 4 mS to 6 mS)
This setting helps manage PIH (post-inflammatory hyperpigmentation) and for appropriate cases of melasma. Tixel will make the skin porous for about 6 hours and thus allowing topical treatment to penetrate the skin. Combining Open-Channel Tixel setting with drugs such as Hydroquinone is very useful for hyperpigmentation.

After the treatment, your skin will be red and feel hot, stingy and tight for a few hours. After this, there should be no more unusual sensation, and you will forget that you just had the Tixel® treatment.

If you have the ablative treatment, the treated area may swell. The redness will continue for a few days to weeks, similar to after deep chemical peels or laser resurfacing procedures. Minor crusting will also appear after a few days. You can start using makeup to cover this redness and crusting two days after the procedure.

You must not unnecessarily touch the treated area to avoid skin infection. Skin colour changes after the treatment may also appear in some skin types.

You must allow the crusting to fall off by itself in about seven days. Scrubbing off the crusting must be avoided, or permanent scarring may occur.

Any treatment around the mouth may trigger cold sores to reappear, but this should heal as expected.

Tixel® – Before and After Pictures