Achieving full lips is an elusive goal
for many women. There is no doubt that lips are a
focal point for most women, just look into any purse
and chances are you'll find several tubes of lipstick
as proof of that. Lipstick, however, can only go so
far before one need consider other options.
Temporary options include material such
as collagen, Fascian, and Radiance® (see the section
regarding collagen for more on this). There are also
more permanent surgical options. Since thinning of
the lips frequently occurs with aging, I commonly
augment lips together with facelifting as a
rejuvenating procedure. The advantage in combining
lip augmentation with a facelift, is that some of
your own tissue removed from the face can be placed
into the lips. When your own tissues are not available, other
options include use of grafts like AlloDerm or Gortex
that don't require any of your own tissue. All of
these procedures increase lip bulk thereby allowing
more pink lip to show. Typically these procedures
are performed through only a couple of very small
incisions nearly inside the mouth at the corners of
the lips. The lips will swell afterwards and bruising
is usually mild. The amount of time you take off
depends mostly on whether you care if people see you
with swollen lips. The procedure can be performed
with or without sedation.
In more advanced cases, there may be
virtually no pink lip showing at all. When this is
the case, a procedure called a lip lift may be more
appropriate. In a lip lift some of the skin of the
upper lip (or lower lip) just above (or below) the
lip margin is removed and the pink lip is then advanced
upward (or downward). Not only does this add to your
lips, but usually dramatically improves any "smokers"
creases you may have around your mouth. After one week
the sutures are removed and a couple of days later
lipstick can be applied completely covering the healing
tissues. After about two months lipstick is usually
not necessary, as the area tends to heal very well.
This procedure can be done with or without sedation.
