Atone time, if you had unattractively thin lips from either heredity or aging,there was not a lot you could do, except put on extra lipstick and hope nobodywould notice. With anything less than a professional make-up artist to do it,this ruse seldom worked. Thin, lined lips with puckered edges were justsomething you had to accept.
Nowadays, however, a lip augmentation procedure is a common and successful formof cosmetic surgery. If done correctly, the improvement is so subtle thatpeople won't recognize what the improvement is. They may ask if you have lostweight or taken a vacation in the sun.
How Lip Augmentation is Done
There are two different ways to do a lip augmentation procedure: injections andgrafts. The substance you hear most about that is used for injections iscollagen, but there are, in fact, a number of different materials that can beused, often with less risk of a bad reaction than with collagen.
The surgeon may inject the patient with fat taken from another part of his orher body such as the thigh. Here there is no risk of allergic reaction and verylittle of infection, since the fat is sterilized before it is injected. It isalso possible to extract collagen from the patient's own skin to inject, or totake collagen from a donor's skin.
There is only one problem with all of these substances. They are all temporary.A synthetic chemical takes the form of tiny beads. When it is injected, theeffects are longer lasting. Unfortunately, it is not widely available in the U.S.
Lip Augmentation for the Long Term
Grafting yields more extended results. The grafts can come from processed humandonor skin. Again, this can come from the patient's own body fat (grafting ismore effective than injection). There is also a fairly new material that isrolled up into a cylinder shape and placed into the lip through an incision.
The surgeon may also bring material from inside the mouth into the lips, butthis is temporary, like injections. If you want to try out a new look beforegoing doing a full surgery, start with on of the temporary procedures.
Recovery is much shorter for a lip augmentation procedure than for mostcosmetic surgery. Injections require only a few days of rest, while it may be aweek or two before you can return to normal activity after a graft.
