I’ve Seen Pictures of Augmentations Gone Wrong: How Can I Be Sure My Lips Will Look Natural?Trillium Plastic Surgery

August 1st, 2016

If you've spent any time looking online for information on lip enhancements, then you've almost certainly seen some of those tragic stories of lip procedures gone wrong and patients ending up with "duck lips." While those kinds of complications are extraordinarily rare, we want to use this chance to offer some insights on how you can get outstanding, gorgeous results for your lips.

Your Lip Augmentation Options: Injectable Fillers, Fat Injections, and Lip Implants

Injectable Fillers

For our potential lip augmentation patients, injectable fillers are one of the best and most popular options because they offer:

• A quick procedure - Injectable filler brands like Juvederm or Restylane can be injected with ultra-thin needles in about 30 minutes.
• Fast recovery time - Patients can get a local numbing agent and can usually go about their day within 10 or 15 minutes.
• Relatively low risk - There can be some temporary bruising and bumps around the lips caused by the filler, but other than that, complications are very rare.
• Easy to undo - If you don't like how your lips turned out for any reason, we can totally erase the filler from your lips in a matter of minutes using a safe enzyme that dissolves the filler.

Iinjectable fillers in the lips last between 6 and 9 months. Your lips may feel a little hard at first, but that subsides in a couple of days leaving your lips feeling soft and natural.

Fat Injections

There is a permanent option for our patients: lip augmentation using fat injections. With fat injections, fat is taken from other parts of the body (usually through a small liposuction site in the abdomen or thighs). After it has been processed and purified, it is very carefully injected into the lips to gently make them fuller.

There are two main advantages to fat injections:

1. First, because the fat comes from the patient there is virtually no chance of rejection.
2. Second, the results are permanent.

While injectable fillers are slowly absorbed by your body, fat injections actually become part of your "new" lips. They can even develop their own blood supply.

However, while injectable fillers can be done in just a few minutes using only a mild numbing agent, the fat injection procedure can last an hour and is usually performed under intravenous "twilight sleep". Also, recovery time can be longer (around 2 weeks) since the procedure is more involved.

Lip Implants

There's still one other option for our patients: lip augmentation using a permanent lip implant. Similar to fat injections, the lip implant procedure is done under an intravenous twilight sleep and local anesthetic. Instead of fat, a silicone implant is used to plump up your lips and make them appear fuller.

A solid piece of silicone is used, so there's no risk of it breaking and leaking like the old silicone breast implants. This solid piece of silicone also has an advantage over fat injection because there's no risk of one side of your lip deflating because the fat was absorbed by your body.

Like fat injections, most patients require a week or two to make a full recovery and see the final results.

Before you do anything, make sure that you give us a call. We'd love to talk with you on the phone or in person at our Knoxville Plastic Surgery office. Call us today at (865) 973-9500 and we'll be more than happy to answer any questions you might have.