Episode 28: Zentite RFMN by Boston Aesthetics

 In this episode of Just Laser It, Dr. Saluja explores the Zentite RF Microneedling system by Boston Aesthetics — a device built around the company’s mission of “beauty without boundaries.” Zentite prioritizes comfort, versatility, efficiency, and fast treatment times, offering multi-depth coagulation in a single pulse with consistent, predictable results. This episode also highlights Zentite’s vacuum-assisted technology, integrated into two of its tips to enhance precision, comfort, and control. Learn how this next-generation platform fits into today’s regenerative aesthetic landscape. 

Thank you for your listenership!

Transcript

MIC1 0:10

Hi everyone. I hope you're doing well. Thank you for joining us in another episode of just Laser and all things cosmetic. Cain is making me laugh out of the gates and can, don't do that. I want your serious face because I do have to kind of concentrate on this

MIC2 0:23

Okay. An alphabet if I'm funny looking.

MIC1 0:25

So what we're gonna talk about today is we're gonna talk about Zite, Z-E-N-T-I-T-E, Zite by Boston Aesthetics and what it is Cane. It's an RF microneedling system that has a lot of complex engineering built into it to help from a safety perspective, a comfort perspective, and also to make this treatment a little faster.

MIC2 0:50

So let's back up a little bit. So Xite is, is newer to the market in the United

MIC1 0:56

It's newer to the market.

MIC2 0:57

So it's relatively new to the US and it is another RF microneedling device.

MIC1 1:03

don't wanna say it's another one. I think it's a standalone one, and I'll tell you the reasons why. Okay. Um, about this. And you know, just recently the FDA came out with a warning letter on RF microneedling just discussing the issues of fat atrophy and textural irregularities that can occur. And what Xite has done is they've engineered this system to really minimize that. And I will say something else too, is that. You know, Kane with radio frequency, it is FDA, cleared for fat reduction. I mean, it's used as fat reduction devices and I think a lot of the issue here is. Yes, these devices have a lot of power, but it's the user capability and understanding how the device works. So if you were to use an RF microing device and you're blasting in energy and you're putting long, long, long poll alterations, you could overcook that skin. And if it's at a depth that's too deep, you can cause fat atrophy.

MIC2 2:01

Okay, let's, let's pause for a moment.'cause you just said a lot, so let's unpack it a little bit. Mm-hmm. So the FDA has come out and said, Hey, just beware that fat atrophy and other textural issues can happen with RF microneedling. Correct.

MIC1 2:15

Correct.

MIC2 2:16

However, that's actually one of the things that RF microneedling is supposed to

MIC1 2:21

not rf. Micro radio

MIC2 2:23

radio frequency. Radio frequency is

MIC1 2:24

is, is intended to do, correct? Correct.

MIC2 2:26

But with what? With. Lack of knowledge or skill or just user air. The FDA is basically saying, just beware of this. It can happen not on purpose.

MIC1 2:37

Correct. It's like saying, Hey, here's a knife, or here's a pair of scissors. Watch out. You might cut your finger. True. There's sharp blades to it. You have to know how to utilize them so that you don't, and you know, I've been at this now for 20 years, right. I've done a fellowship in, in cosmetic dermatology where laser science was a big focus. Even to this day when I get a new device in the practice, what do I do, Kane? I go and fly to the experts and have them train me on how they do it. The same has to be done with anyone who puts an energy based device in their practice. I think it's really important and imperative to do that.

MIC2 3:09

Yeah, it's one thing to invest in the technology to be able to provide it to your patients, but it's another thing to invest in your skillset and knowledge to be able to do it appropriately.

MIC1 3:17

Correct. So let's talk about this device and some of the standout features of it. Boston Aesthetics is actually backed by the Peninsula Medical Group, which is they have about 70% of the market share in China in RF microneedling with this device, and in fact, with with Zen. In fact, last year, just last year, 2024, they treated over a half a million patients with this device. So there's a lot of real world data coming in with this device, which I think that kind of speaks to the credibility of this device as well. Um, and so again, they, what they're trying to do is they're trying to engineer into this device. A comfortable experience that reaches where you get your efficacy and it is in a shorter treatment period. So how do they do this? How do they do this to try to make it a little bit better? Well. There is. What they have is they have something called step technology, which is their spatial, temporal emission pin control technology built into

MIC2 4:22

this. Okay. I will not remember that, but Okay.

MIC1 4:25

but step, so think of it is from a spatial perspective, you are able to achieve energy at five different levels. With one insertion. So I can select how, what depths I wanna place these high peak powers of energy, um, rather than going over the tissue five times. That's one perspective of the

MIC2 4:46

Okay. So that's, so that's one difference as well with zite versus other RF microneedling devices. Correct.

MIC1 4:53

If I wanted to do that with other, then I would put my pin setting at 3.5, do a pass, then I would go to, you know, 2.8, do a pass. Then I would do two, 2.0. So I would have to do so many multiple passes.

MIC2 5:05

have to do multiple passes at multiple settings. But with xite, it's one pass and you're still getting the multiple

MIC1 5:10

one insertion, and you can do up to five settings. Now, there are times that I only need to do two or three settings, depending on where I am in the tissue, so it's customizable. It's not that Here you are, five. I can choose one, one, depth. I can choose up to five depths, essentially. Again, looking at the

MIC2 5:26

But again, just, I, I think it's worth repeating that, that customizable aspect also, you gotta make sure that your provider's, you know, really well trained on this.

MIC1 5:36

Absolutely. Absolutely. So that's one perspective of the spatial part. The other perspective is that it does not just, so all these needles are not deployed at one time. So let's say we're talking about three different tips. There's a nine pin tip that's used around the eyes. It has vacuum. There's a 25 pin tip, which I use a lot for the neck area that has vacuum, and then there's a 49 pin tip that's used for the face without

MIC2 6:03

vacuum. When you say pin tips, this is like 49. Little needles.

MIC1 6:07

needles. And these little needles are little. They are 150 microns in size, which just to give you perspective, people who are injectors, they inject Botox with 31 32 gauge needles. This is a 34 gauge type of needle, so it's really small, smaller than the diameter of a human hair.

MIC2 6:24

right? It's called RF microneedling.

MIC1 6:27

microneedling, correct. Correct. For a reason.

MIC2 6:28

micro meaning little.

MIC1 6:29

So the other spatial perspective is that it's not deploying, again, all these needles at once, but rather it's deploying several needles at a time across the continuum of these total needles.

MIC2 6:41

So what that basically does is disperses the pain. I would imagine

MIC1 6:45

It does. It disperses the pain. It's not hitting all your pain receptors at once, even though it's very, very fast. Like it's not that it's gonna take a longer bit of time to deploy it that way. They're super, super fast. And so that's another way that we could talk about the spatial perspective.

MIC2 7:01

So it just helps with the tolerability and the pain.

MIC1 7:03

Correct. And that's again, what their mission is, is that they wanna take these technologies, they wanna engineer this in, you know, this, this company, um, it. The, the parent company has over 300 patents, so they're, they're really doing some incredible research to, to try to do this. But the temporal perspective, so now we talked about the spatial, the temporal perspective is that in these five different zones, up to five different zones, I can put my. As long or as short of a pulse duration that I wanna place in there. So if I am deeper and I wanna do, a little longer time on tissue, I can factor that in. I could go to my screen and put that in. If I'm a little bit more superficial, I can do a little less time on tissue. So that's one other aspect of the temporal perspective of

MIC2 7:53

What are, what are, I don't want to probably get into a lot of detail, but what are some things that would determine how long you would want to do something versus another?

MIC1 8:02

Well, for example, if I am under, the neck area and the submental area right under the chin and if it's just thicker tissue there, I might wanna put a little bit longer. Of upholster deeper into the tissue. Now when I'm more superficial, I don't wanna drive that much heat there because it's closer to the epidermis. So then I go a little bit gentler with my heat. So that's kind of it. Typically, deeper is more and more superficial is less okay as far as upholster alterations. But then the other thing too is that, again, it. It's not one massive pulse around it, but it's these little tiny bursts. So these bursts of pulses are like, 0.2 milliseconds in, in length. So it's almost like this, Let's say I have a line and I want to capture lightning energy. I would do it in small little bursts to be able to drive that lightning energy instead of one big, massive burst, which would fry the system. So I'm basically, by having these little bursts, it gives the tissue time to have a little pause and a little relaxation while still keeping the heat deep into the

MIC2 9:07

what's the purpose of that? Is that just again, to help kind of disperse the pain and make it more

MIC1 9:11

comfortable. Correct? To have high peak power, to have a little bit of a thermal relaxation time, but not relaxing it to the point where you're not creating, the intended heat that's necessary for therapeutic

MIC2 9:22

Okay, so I think it's worth repeating what you said earlier. It didn't really dawn on me when you said it, but now that I'm, we're going through this, what Zite and, and Boston Aesthetic is trying to accomplish is to deliver a device that still delivers the results, but does it in a quicker time period with less pain.

MIC1 9:40

and can they surpass the results? You know, can they surpass with higher peak power, less discomfort and, and, and get you to goal. That's exactly right. Um, results

MIC2 9:51

tolerability and time, that's really what they're trying to

MIC1 9:53

correct. So that's the other thing that's nice in this step, this, technology that's built into a spatial temporal emission pin control. The other thing that's really nice about it is that. It has this ultra fast multi pulses technology, which we kind of talked about. That's this, delivering it a few needles at a time at this point, two millisecond component to really drive that energy, but in little tiny pulse duration so that you have time for the tissue to have thermal relaxation. So two, two things that they've engineered in. There's another thing they've engineered in, because think about this cane., Let's say someone is having their neck done and they've had a biopsy from a previous suspicious lesion on their neck, right? So they might have a little scar there. So when you're going over that tissue, the tissue's not consistent. It's not homogenous. At that little spot, the tissue's gonna be more resistant, right? It's because of that scarred area.

MIC2 10:49

little tougher,

MIC1 10:50

Little tougher. So sometimes needles are harder to drive in there and you patients can feel more pain when it hits that resistance, and oftentimes the needles might not get through that

MIC2 10:59

right?

MIC1 11:00

So what they've also engineered into this system is a sensor which senses the tension of the tissue and when it comes across that, okay, this little area has got a little bit of tension, a second motor. Then drives it clearly in, so it almost puts a little more gas power to that. It's like if you're going uphill and you're on cruise control, right? It drive, you hear it kind of bursting a little bit

MIC2 11:26

your, your car will kick in,

MIC1 11:27

car will kick in. Your car will kick in to get you up that hill. So this is what Zite does. It allows for that second motor to kick in to drive

MIC2 11:34

So this really is smart technology. I mean, it can sense, okay, I need a little more oomph. That's

MIC1 11:39

That's right. It senses the, which kind

MIC2 11:41

and this is all happening in like nanoseconds.

MIC1 11:44

In small

MIC2 11:45

you don't know it

MIC1 11:46

a pulse, like if you were to look at that pulse being delivered, and if you put your foot on the pedal, you wouldn't see even this little fractional kind of release of energy. You would just see it all. It would appear as all one, um, you know, deployment of the needles. So it's again, happening in 0.2 milliseconds of time. So it's just really, really fast. But all of those things, again, lead to a more seamless type of entry of these needles and a and a little more comfortable. Now I'm gonna talk about one thing that I really like about it as well. I've like about, I like all these things about it, but I'll, I'll tell you where I find that it stands. A little bit higher than my other microneedling devices that I have, radiofrequency microneedling devices, and that is that vacuum technology. So. Remember how I was telling you the FDA also reported textural issues with people. Because what was happening is sometimes users will push their foot on the foot pedal and will be deploying the needles and the RF energy before they even touch the skin. So what happens is they're not putting it in the skin. They're putting it on the skin and causing these IR irregularities with xite.

MIC2 12:56

yeah, I've never thought about

MIC1 12:57

Yeah. So they have to pay attention.

MIC2 12:59

probably pretty common. Absolutely.

MIC1 13:02

Because unless you're really watching, sometimes it's hard for, for people. They might get into conversation with the patient thinking that, let's talk to the patient then they're not paying attention to, to the pedals. But oftentimes you can get into the groove of it. Well, with Xite and especially with this vacuum handpiece. It has to lay on the skin. It suctions up the tissue just in a gentle way, and then it deploys the needles so that the skin is suctioned up before the needles are ever deployed. So that is a safety perspective

MIC2 13:34

that's, that's actually really smart and neat. That's kind of cool.

MIC1 13:39

of cool. And I never have to put my foot on the pedal because only when it's sectioned up appropriately does it deploy the

MIC2 13:46

Oh, I would imagine that would be really important. Around curved areas on the

MIC1 13:51

That's exactly right, Kane. So that's exactly,

MIC2 13:55

to, like, you know, it's hard to get all the skin if you're on a, a jawbone or something.

MIC1 14:00

right. So that's where, if someone is a little off, then some needles might deploy, deeper. Other needles might not be, they might be a little more shallow and you could get textural issues. This, the whole tissue has to suction in so it's more comfortable for the patient. I know that I'm giving, an efficient delivery of these needles at a standardized level as well.

MIC2 14:21

well.

MIC1 14:22

So it really adds to the safety and, and it also adds to minimizing user fatigue. I don't have to keep putting my foot on the foot pedal. Now, oftentimes there's automatic settings where you just put it on and, and, and then it, it

MIC2 14:35

That is something that people prob probably are unaware of. It's, it's can quite, it can be exhausting for the provider to con to, to do these

MIC1 14:43

Sure, sure.

MIC2 14:44

Um, but so those, but I do, I do wanna like summarize this up. I'm gonna ask you to do it'cause we covered a lot and there's a lot of really neat engineering and technology on this. And there's also a lot of RF microneedling devices already on the market. Now this is in new to the us but it's really cool. So if you had to summarize just the. The basic differences between this and the many other RF microneedling devices, what are they? I mean, I know the big three like results, comfort and

MIC1 15:13

And safety. And safety.

MIC2 15:14

and safety.

MIC1 15:15

I mean, that's where you wanna be able, whenever you get a device in the practice, you wanna have consistent results in patients that are safe. You know, whether it's laser resurfacing, they might have a little longer downtime or shorter downtime, et cetera. It's always gonna be something, and you can get bruising with this. We, we will talk about what to expect with this too next, but you can get bruising with this. So. Let's, let's jump into that. What can a patient expect with treatment? Well, even though it's comfortable, you still have to numb. We numb an hour prior to treatment. Then we do the treatment and patients on the low end might experience minimal, if any, bruising on the higher end. They can experience bruising for seven to 10 days. We typically don't recommend it in patients who are on anticoagulation because of that perspective. But it is. Is there

MIC2 16:00

way to kind of predict it or it's just a, some people are just gonna respond differently.

MIC1 16:03

Yeah, and some, sometimes patients will say, Hey, Dr. Sja, I'm a bruiser and I'm gonna tell'em, okay, then you better plan your schedule accordingly.'cause you will bruise with this. Remember, these are 150 micron needle insertions. Um, and then typically afterwards, you know, these little tiny needle insertions will close up very quickly so patients can go back to their makeup after 24 hours. It's important to not do it with anybody who has a pacemaker or a defibrillator if they're pregnant, you know, all the typical, if they're lactating, we don't wanna do these type of procedures on them. But that's kind of, kind of the gist of it.

MIC2 16:36

Alright, let me, let me just back up one minute because I know RF microneedling is, is very well known and established out there, but very quickly, why would somebody want to do RF microneedling in the first place?

MIC1 16:46

Well, it can improve texture, it can improve a little bit of the laxity as well to the skin, and certainly for pore size and acne scarring. We haven't even gotten into the clinicals of it, so looking at the results of it, prior to to the treatment, they were looking at collagen levels of, let's say 7% post three treatments. It jumped up to 16%. Elastin went from, 7% to 26%. And when you're looking at acne scarred patients, there was a study that looked at 126 patients and they showed. 81% of these patients really good, if not excellent results with acne scarring and acne scarring is hard to treat, so it allows for that depth of penetration to deliver this

MIC2 17:27

So you're really trying to establish elastin and collagen or,

MIC1 17:30

improve elastin collagen.

MIC2 17:31

yeah, and that does a lot of things that can tighten your skin. It can prove texture, it can improve pores, work on scarring. Many different things,

MIC1 17:39

And you can combine this as just one final thought with other. Energy-based modalities. In fact, we're doing a study in our practice where we're looking at Xite and we're combining it with a resurfacing and ian resurfacing with the FATA laser. And so we'll have the results of these, treatments post one treatment, and some patients are electing to have two and three treatments, on our Instagram, which is at Solu Laser md. So we'll have that in the new year.

MIC2 18:04

Okay, good. So this is really cool new technology on, a, a procedure that's been out for a while, but this is a new spin on it that makes it more comfortable in less time with the same or better results.

MIC1 18:18

Correct. I mean, this become my new go-to for rf microneedling for the neck and I haven't used the eye tip yet. That's the nine millimeter one. But when that comes to the practice, I'm definitely gonna be looking at that as well.

MIC2 18:29

Awesome.

MIC1 18:30

Alright, well thank you so much and we'll see you on the next episode.

MIC2 18:35

Thanks everybody. Bye.

MIC1 18:35

Bye-Bye.