Question: My lips have been thinning with age and it’s really been bothering me. I used to have great luscious lips and I’d love to have them back to how they used to be, but I’m very hesitant of lip augmentation. The results I’ve ever seen look so unnatural. Are there other options that can augment the lips more naturally?

Answer: Unfortunately, I think you have just seen some bad injections giving the appearance of very unnatural appearing lips.  This is not the filler agent’s problem but the injector’s fault since when properly performed; we can do a very natural appearing lip augmentation with fillers, such as Juvederm and Restylane.  In fact, since it is an injectable filler agent as opposed to an actual implant that gets placed there, we can highly customize where volume is added to the lip and give a patient a very natural but also very rejuvenated and luscious lip.  

Question: Do you think Juvederm is the best option for lip augmentation? Is it better than Restylane?

Answer: I think Juvederm is an excellent option for lip augmentation since it is very smooth and soft and I can do an excellent job of contouring the lip with it. I do, however, know injectors who prefer Restylane due to the fact that it is slightly thicker and they feel they can contour better with it. In my hands, Juvederm seems to work better, but I think that your injector should be the one who recommends a preference of one over the other.

Question: I have an uneven upper lip line. Would injectable fillers make it look more even?

Answer: In almost all patients that have an uneven upper lip line, injectable fillers can be customized to create a more symmetric appearance, but it really depends on the reason behind the uneven lip line as to whether or not we would actually be able to get a symmetric lip or simply make it look more symmetric.

Question: Is collagen still used for lip augmentation or are hyaluronic acid fillers now the best choice?

Answer: I am sure that in some offices collagen is still used for lip augmentation but, in my opinion, it is rather inferior to the hyaluronic acid products due to the fact that the hyaluronic acid products last a significantly longer time than standard collagen. There are newer collagen injectables that seem to last just as long as the HAs, but I do not have any personal experience with those injectables at the time of this blog.  I think, overall, clients should listen to the recommendations of their injector assuming that the injector is extremely experienced with a variety of different filler agents and has performed treatments to the area that you are interested on a frequent basis. At Quintessa Aesthetic Center, we actually train injectors so that we minimize less than desirable results in our community since I think that overall helps everyone, including us, who is in the aesthetic business.