NeoGen Recovery Day by Day: What the Studies Recorded

The gap between how nitrogen plasma is marketed and what patients go through is the single thing most worth getting straight before you book. The treatment is regularly presented as something you fit into a lunch hour. It is not, and the studies behind the device are clearer about that than most of the copy written about it.

This guide sets out what happens and when. The figures come from the published trials, so where we say four days or six days, that is what was recorded rather than what we would like it to be.

Two protocols, two recoveries

There is no single NeoGen recovery, because the device is used across a wide energy range and the recovery scales with it.

Lower energy, at our clinic to 1.5 joules, is given as a course of sessions three to six weeks apart. Each session is milder and the recovery is shorter, but there are more of them.

Higher energy, above 1.5 joules, does more in one visit and asks more of the following week. Topical anaesthetic is applied first.

Which one applies to you is decided at consultation against what you have come in about and how your skin behaves, and it changes both the price and the week afterwards.

The day of treatment

Expect warmth and a series of pulses. At lower settings most people describe this as uncomfortable rather than painful. At higher settings it is a different experience: in the high-energy acne scarring study, patients were treated at 3.5 to 4.0 joules with anaesthetic support in place.

Immediately afterwards the skin is red and feels hot and tight, much like sunburn. Some tightening is visible on the day, from collagen contracting in response to the heat, and it is not the final result.

Days one to three

The skin darkens. This is the part people are least prepared for and the part that is most normal. At higher energies the treated area takes on a bronzed, leathery look before anything comes away.

The treated surface is drying out and staying put, which is the mechanism working rather than a complication. That desiccated layer is the reason nitrogen plasma leaves no open wound: it acts as a natural dressing while new skin forms underneath it.

Do not pick it, and do not exfoliate it. Nothing else in this guide matters as much. Strip that layer off early and you expose new skin before it is ready, which is how people end up with a pigmentation problem or a mark that outlasts everything the treatment gained them.

Days three to six

The layer begins to flake and separate, usually starting around the mouth and nose and spreading outward. It is uneven, and it looks worse in the mirror than to anyone else.

The published figures for this stage:

• In the low-energy study of eight patients given three treatments, re-epithelialisation was complete at four days and patients assessed redness as lasting six days on average.
• In the same study, recovery after the first session took nine days, against four and five days for the second and third. Your first session is the longest one.
• In the high-energy study, re-epithelialisation was complete at four to six days.

So the honest planning figure is most of a week for the first session, and around four to six days for later ones.

Week two onward

New skin is exposed and will be pink, sensitive and easily irritated. Redness settles over the following days but can persist longer in some people. Sun protection is not optional here: newly re-epithelialised skin burns readily and pigments readily.

The result you came for arrives later than the recovery finishes. Collagen remodelling continues over months, and in the low-energy study a band of new collagen at a mean depth of 72.3 microns was found on biopsy three months after the last of three treatments. Objective improvement was still measurable at six months in the studies that followed patients that long.

How to plan around it

• Book when you have a quiet week, particularly for a first session.
• Not before an event. Not a wedding, not a holiday, not a work presentation. Count back from the date and leave more room than you think you need.
• Expect to look like you have had something done. Around the eyes especially, for the best part of a week.
• Plan the whole course. Sessions sit three to six weeks apart and the manufacturer’s protocol runs to three to six of them, so this is a commitment across months rather than a single appointment.
• Sessions are planned around our Energist trainer’s clinic days. Energist’s head of UK training oversees every NeoGen treatment through the introductory period, and your clinician maps the course out with you at consultation.

What is not normal

Redness, dryness, tightness, bronzing and flaking are all expected. Contact the clinic if you have spreading pain, swelling that worsens after the first few days, discharge, or anything that looks like a cold sore developing, which is worth raising in advance if you are prone to them.

Frequently asked questions