Refining the appearance of the upper lip is a delicate business, and sometimes a single procedure just doesn’t do the trick. Recently, some plastic surgeons have been using a two-part procedure to enhance the appearance of the upper lip a Botox injection to mask fine lines, followed by injections of hyaluronic acid fillers to add volume. This technique was recently featured on an episode of ABCâ??s The Doctors.
(Please note: the video below shows a woman having her lips injected with dermal fillers. Although the procedure is painless, it might be a bit unsettling to people with a phobia of needles.)
“I’ve always had thin lips,” says Mary. “I’ve tried different kinds of lipsticks and liners and things that might allegedly plump your lips but it’s not really worked. I don’t do enough for myself and it would be really fun to have some girly lips.” The solution for Mary is what Dr. Ordon calls the upper lip overhaul. Unlike similar procedures previously performed on the show, this is a twofold procedure with one half having been performed in advance. Botox has been injected near Mary’s upper lip to resolve the fine lines that appeared there. The second step involves adding volume with dermal fillers along the border of the lip, where the lip has thinned as a result of the aging process. “Typically, with the aging process, you see those lips thin, because we lose volume in the structures around the mouth,” says Dr. Ordon. Botox and hyaluronic acid fillers both last roughly 3-6 months, so that patients can have the results of the dual procedure refreshed simultaneously.
There’s something else that I noticed in the video, which often goes unnoticed, but bears mentioning. You can see how subtle the results of the procedure are Dr. Chopra deftly avoids the over-plumped look that is the hallmark of bad cosmetic surgery in Hollywood nowadays. That’s because Dr. Chopra knows exactly how far to go, and when to stop.
Back in April, the ASAPS website had an interesting post about the importance of shape, as well as size, when performing lip augmentation. Plastic surgeons need to be careful about how much volume to add, since too much volume can result in trout pout overdone lips that make you appear fishy. Your lips have a natural proportion that must be respected. According to one Detroit plastic surgeon quoted in the article, the lower lip should be one and a half times the size of the upper lip. That’s the proportion of Mary’s lips that you can see in the video.
Dr. Jonov is a cosmetic surgeon who specializes in plastic surgeries of the face, breast, and body at Seattle Plastic Surgery.
