At Southwest Plastic Surgery, we get asked about Kybella about once a week, usually a version of the same question: Can I dissolve my double chin with a few injections?
Honestly, yes it can and yes, it really depends on your neck. I have had Kybella injections on my neck, so I can attest first-hand to exactly what happens, what it feels and its downsides.
What Kybella Actually Is
Kybella is deoxycholic acid, a chemical that destroys fat cells. When you have it injected into a fatty area, it dissolves that particular pocket of fat and then your body clears it. The volume decreases.
FDA has approved only one use: subcutaneous fat beneath the chin, popularly known as the double chin. While practitioners inject it off-label in various small fat pockets, which might be advisable given the injector’s anatomy knowledge, the double chin was the reason it became popular.
How Many Sessions, and What Is the Downtime?
With your neck, it requires typically three sessions to get the total benefit from a course of treatment. Some individuals wish to do just a single session to get a sense of what just one round is capable of, which I think is a perfectly sensible way to proceed to find out.
It takes only one day to return to full normal activity. The surprised feeling people have is related to the temporary increased size of the treated site, which actually initially feels fuller than when smaller. Final visual result can take anywhere from two to four weeks.
Having experienced this myself, I can confirm they sting slightly more than Botox or fillers. But it is not pain, just discomfort. You feel the turkey neck seems larger for a short period and then after healing, the main part of your neck tightens.
Who Is a Good Candidate for Kybella?
This is where most of the disappointment I see could have been avoided. Kybella is designed to do only one specific thing: address the subcutaneous fat sitting right under the skin, in the center of the neck.
If your skin is loose, dissolving the fat underneath just leaves you with looser, saggier skin. Kybella also does not work if the fullness sits deeper, below the platysma muscle. In that case it will not touch the fat and you will not see a change. And it cannot remove fat out along the sides of your neck or jawline. Kybella is really a tool for the central pocket of your double chin.
A quality injector checks for all three before ever drawing up a syringe. At our med spa, that screening is the first conversation, not the last.
Kybella, CoolSculpting, or Liposuction: The Honest Comparison
I do not like CoolSculpting for the neck. I must be clear about that. It kills the fat by freezing it so the body slowly absorbs it. Different mechanism than Kybella, freezing instead of dissolving, but the results land in the same limited range.
| Option | How much fat it removes | Where it works |
|---|---|---|
| Kybella | About twenty percent | Central neck pocket only |
| CoolSculpting | About twenty percent | Central neck pocket only |
| Liposuction with FaceTite | Up to eighty percent | Jawline, central neck, and lateral neck |
The only thing you really need from this post is those numbers. Both nonsurgical options remove around twenty percent of the fat in just the one small central area. With liposuction, up to eighty percent of the fat across the entire lower face and neck, including the sides that injections cannot touch, can be removed. The FaceTite procedure adds the skin tightening through tiny hidden incisions, one behind each ear and one under the chin.
This is the crazy part. If you opt for a neck liposuction with FaceTite added, you will pay pretty much the same amount for that one procedure as you would for three sessions of Kybella. Same money, several times the result.
Are the Results Permanent?
Yes, with a caveat. Once fat cells are destroyed, the body does not create new ones in that area. That holds for Kybella and for liposuction alike.
However, the fat cells left over can still get bigger with weight gain. No procedure actually makes you immune to the number on the scale; you will retain the result you manage.
Where Kybella Fits at Southwest Plastic Surgery
I trained in plastic surgery at the Mayo Clinic and have made the Castle Connolly Top Doctors list every year for thirteen years. I say that to explain the vantage point of this review, not to advertise. Kybella is a real tool with a narrow lane, and I keep it in that lane.
For someone younger, with tighter skin and a small, central, soft fat pocket below the chin, Kybella can be a good option, and we offer it alongside our other injectables. For loose skin, deeper fullness or fat that circles your jawline and your side neck, it is going to sound blunt, but the injection is not the right choice and a surgical plan to move ahead with a neck liposuction with FaceTite or a neck lift would serve you far better. It really is a matter of choosing the right procedure to match the right neck. #StayBeautiful
Ready to Talk?
Bring us your neck and we will tell you honestly which lane it belongs in: a series of Kybella sessions, or one procedure that does more for the same money.
Call (915) 590-7900, text 1-866-814-0038, or book online at agulloplasticsurgery.com/appointments.
@RealDrWorldWide on Instagram, TikTok, and Snapchat, @Agullo on X, or @AgulloPlasticSurgery on Facebook.
Cross-links
- Surgical perspective on agulloplasticsurgery.com: “Why I Still Reach for Liposuction and FaceTite Over Kybella” (link once live)
- Editorial version on drworldwide.com: “I Had Kybella Myself: A Surgeon’s Honest Read on the Fat-Dissolving Shot” (link once live)
