Volume, shape and harmony with the overall facial look are the three main factors that are of key importance about lip aesthetics. To consider a lip “beautiful”, it has to fit well to the general architecture of the face. Lips don’t consist of the red parts only. They have a uniquue anatomy, depressions, prominences, contours and a specific soft tissue architecture. The perception of attractive lips depend on how good these anatomic details are pronounced, together with enough volume.

There are three ways to augment the lips: Synthetic injectable fillers, fat injection and silicone lip implants.

The synthetic filler material called “hyaluronic acid” is injected to certain points on the lips. This material is already present in the human connective tissue, thus it has no serious side effects. Main anatomic elements of the lips such as the white roll, cupid’s bow, philtral colons, the M-shaped prominence of the mid-upper lip, and the lower lip tubercles are highlighted.  Vermilion volume is increased accordingly, and outward rotation is achieved. Corner of the mouth and barcode lines (if there are any) are corrected. The whole procedure takes around 10 minutes.

The key point here is respecting the anatomy. Injecting exaggerated amounts of fillers just to augment the vermilion will just give an uncontrolled volume to the lips, which definitely looks artificial. If the injector does not have a thorough knowledge of surgical anatomy of the lips, it looks quite likely to fail. The secret is obtaining the maximum effect by minimum amount of filler.

Effect of hyaluronic acid lip fillers last for 6-12 months.

People who have vertically long lips, in other words people whose nasal base-lip margin distance is more than 15 milimeters are considered as candidates for a lip-lift. This operation is performed under local anaesthesia, via a 2-cm incision on the alar base, in 15 minutes. It’s simply removing the excess height in the upper lip by direct surgical excision. This way, the lip shortens in the vertical axis, and the lip margin rotates upwards.

4-day stay is enough.