Price Awareness: HIFU

High-intensity focused ultrasound (HIFU for short)  is a non-surgical way of lifting sagging skin and tightening up the facial contours.

Often billed as a ‘non-surgical face lift’ for sagging skin, the treatment is intended to stimulate the production of collagen, increasing skin firmness and strengthening the scaffolding of the face. HIFU is obviously much more affordable than a surgical lift, but that doesn’t mean it’s cheap – side note: if any tweakment seems particularly ‘cheap’, steer clear – so it’s helpful to have an idea of what to expect money-wise before you start doing lots of research.

What influences the cost of HIFU?

As with any tweakment, several factors affect the price. For HIFU, these will be:

• Which type of ultrasound you choose – This gets a little confusing, but there are a couple of branded devices that use ultrasound energy but aren’t technically HIFU, like Sofwave and Ultherapy, for example, though they all tend to get lumped in together. As a general rule, you’ll pay more for treatment with one of these heavily marketed devices compared to a generic HIFU machine. However, that higher price also gets you a market-leading device with a robust safety profile and tons of clinical testing behind it to prove its efficacy.
• Which area you want to treat – You can either do a full face and neck of HIFU or use it to spot treat – just the neck, the jowls, or the brow area, for example. Obviously, the bigger the area, the more it will cost.
• If you repeat the treatment – HIFU and other types of ultrasound treatment are appealing because you generally only need one treatment, and the results are long-lasting – around 18 months. It won’t halt the ageing process through, and as the years go on and your natural collagen supplies decline, you might want to repeat the treatment. It’s worth mentioning that this one is a slow burner in terms of results, so be prepared to wait three to six months to see the full effect of the treatment before you decide if you’re happy with the results.
• Practitioner’s experience – A practitioner who specialises in HIFU or other ultrasound treatments (especially if it makes up the bulk of their practice) may well charge more than others, simply because they’ll have more experience than most in performing the treatment. This could also apply if they’re what we call a Key Opinion Leader for the brand behind the HIFU device they use. This basically means they’re a sort of brand ambassador and are considered one of the best practitioners in the country for their work. They’ll usually also head up training for other practitioners with the device in question, and so their expertise is in high demand.
• Location – Those of us in the capital will always pay a premium on just about anything, tweakments included. If you live somewhere where the cost of living is generally lower, the price of tweakments is likely to be lower, too.

All things considered, expect to pay around £2,500 for a full face HIFU or ultrasound treatment, and around £450 for a brow lift.