Over-Filled Lips are a Freaky Predicament

The lips have become the go-to scapegoat for bad plastic surgery, as evidenced by numerous celebrities or wanna-be celebrities with fish lips. Overfilling lips is not only bad form, but a disgrace to board certified surgeons who spend their careers looking to help patients achieve natural results.

On a special Halloween episode of No Spin Live, the experts discuss lip augmentation and what patients need to know to get real results.

Filling the Lip

Facial fillers and Botox have taken over the cosmetic market with their incredible rejuvenative abilities. Fillers for the lips are the latest rage, with patients as young as their late teens seeking out lip-plumping injections to get “the look”. Unfortunately for many, that great, plump look will only come from experienced hands, not the latest GroupOn coupon.

“The bottom line with this is, we’ve all been doing lip filler for quite a long time,” shares board certified plastic surgeon Dr. Jason Pozner of Florida. “As with all other plastic surgery, it’s the abnormal and the freaky-looking patients that attract all of the attention. Most of the women who come to us want natural-looking lips – usually bigger than they originally had. Maybe they deflated a little bit or they just want to be on the larger side.

“My biggest thing is, I always tell the patients after awhile, ‘You’re cut off! That’s enough! Your lips are big enough.’ But some people want huge lips; I don’t like to do that so they know not to come to me for huge lips.”

Too Many Providers of Questionable Skill

The problem with overdone lips is many of the patients are young and have no experience in plastic surgery procedures or processes. They may see a Kylie Jenner Instagram post and do a quick internet search for local lip augmentation providers. Maybe the nearest one is a dentist running a good deal, why would that patient know any better?

“You can actually get lip filler pretty much on every street corner by any kind of provider,” shares Jonquille Chantrey, a facial rejuvenation expert in the United Kingdom. “We’ve got such a problem in the U.K., it’s like paramedics are starting to inject! You’ve got beauty therapists injecting. They’re the ones that often have big social media accounts, so they’re really influencing trends.

“The kind of patients I see are bright, discerning types of women. They don’t want anything that looks obvious. In fact, they want to go so under the radar that it’s extremely conservative. ”

Patient Education is Everything

Education is critical with any procedure – just because it’s a “simple injection” doesn’t mean there aren’t a lot of variables involved to achieve great results. “I think patient education is everything,” shares Dr. Chantrey. “I talk to them about their profile, their nose, chin, ratios, exactly what’s happening from an anatomical perspective so they have more ownership over their choices.”

Younger patients aren’t the only ones looking to plump the lip, either. Older patients also want in on the trend, and these patients require a very different approach than their younger counterparts.

“The confusion over lips is that we think they should just be fuller, but there’s two categories,” explains board certified plastic surgeon Dr. Lou Bucky. “There’s the aging lip and then there’s the younger, thin lip. The treatment for the aging lip is very different. There’s a trend towards younger people coming in who want a more defined Cupid’s Bow, who want a fuller lip. Because their tone is good and they haven’t deflated, they can get that and look very nice. When you do that same treatment to an older patient whose lips are deflated, they’re the ones that look very strange. The management of the aging lip is very different.”

No matter your age or the condition of your lips, there is an answer if patients are willing to seek it out. Trust in an expert with years of experience rather than a provider who took a weekend course. It is, after all, a body-altering procedure. Shouldn’t you want the best when making such a change to a focal point of your appearance?

“Trend-wise, because of social media, because of influences, a lot of younger people want lips that are more defined and fuller,” continues Bucky. “They can look good! When a patient who has an aging lip wants the same thing, it can look very exaggerated, very unattractive and we have to educate those people a lot.”