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If you are looking for fuller, plumper lips, then you may be looking for a lip augmentation, also called lip implant, cosmetic surgery. This can be either the top or bottom lip. It will however not miraculously fix any fine lines around your mouth.
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Please note that we are not involved in any way with cosmetic surgery, or any procedures like lip augmentation, but are manufacturers of skin care products, but include these information pages on our website for the interest of our visitors, since it also deals with looking good in the broadest context. |
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Lip augmentation surgery is normally performed under local anesthetic and two different types of procedure can be followed to achieve your goal.
The lips can be made fuller by injecting the area with a "filler" material, please click here to read more on fillers, or by implanting a sheet type of implant under the lips via small incisions at the corner of your mouth.
Since fillers, are eventually re-absorbed by the body, most people opt for the implant sheet method - but your cosmetic surgeon will be able to help you decide by providing additional information.
Your own fat can also be harvested and injected into the lips - click here for more information on fat injections.
- Implant sheet material for lip augmentation
- There are three major types of implant sheet material used
- Alloderm
- Dermaplant and
- Gore-Tex
- Alloderm and Dermaplant are collagen harvested from deceased human donors and are prepared in sheet form. The result obtained by using these implants are soft and natural-looking lips, but they normally shrink within a year, and your lips would then again be their pre-operative size.
- Gore-Tex is a manufactured compound that feels like plastic / rubber, and although the result with Gore-Tex is stiffer than with the other two above, the result is more permanent since it doesn't shrink.
- The one drawback that Gore-Tex may have, the same as with Soft-form (another type of implantable sheet), is that your body may eventually "push" it out of the lips, since it may see it as a foreign body and reject it.
- Restylane is a sterile gel containing non-animal stabilized hyaluronic acid, which is very close to that found in the body, and has become a very popular injectable augmentation tool to plastic surgeons.
- It is non-allergenic and although great results are achieved, the results, like any other injectable, are not permanent.
- Autologen is a collagen material made from the patient's own collagen by harvesting a 3 mm plug from the patient and then "growing" the collagen from it in a laboratory. The results are great but the price may be prohibitive.
- Notes on lip augmentation / implants
- Before having a lip augmentation discuss the possibility of cold sore outbreaks with your plastic surgeon as well as the possibility of infection, extrusion (where the material is pushed out of the lips) as well as the rate of re-absorption in the case of injectable fillers.
- Since this is not a major surgical procedure, the recovery period is short since swelling and bruising normally disappears within a week.
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