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- Hi, I'm talking about dermal fillers today,
and with particular emphasis on the buccal hollows,
which is the area that is just below our cheeks.
When we look at dermal fillers in the face,
this may be an area that we tend to forget about or ignore.
We may have more of an emphasis on filling the cheeks
and the nasolabials, but I find that actually
filling the buccal hollows can actually give you
a very fresh, uplifting look.
As we age, we tend to look in the mirror
and try and work out what's going on.
We feel like our face is gaunt or drawn,
or somehow coming down.
And we tend to focus on the lines and the wrinkles
and think that's what it's about,
but it's actually about the loss of volume in our face.
We're all born with something called fat pads
under our skin, and unfortunately, as we age,
they tend to decrease in size, and this gives us
our volume loss.
And this is where filler steps in,
we can actually add that fat back,
or add that volume back, and suddenly going from feeling
like you look tired or drawn, or your face is coming down,
we suddenly have an uplifting look.
Most people, when I start to discuss dermal fillers,
get a little bit nervous, generally a lot of my patients
have already been having anti-wrinkle injections
with me for a period of time,
and when we start talking about fillers,
they think it's a lot bigger deal.
I actually find it's a more comfortable procedure
than having anti-wrinkle injections.
These days, dermal fillers are a very easy procedure.
It's walk-in, walk-out, exceptionally safe,
minimal down time, and very little discomfort.
Okay, so I have my patient Jen with me today,
and we're going to be doing some dermal filler on her.
Now, when you have a look at Jen's face,
she's actually got quite good cheeks.
But where I feel that she's missing that volume
that we were talking about before
is in something called her buccal hollows.
And this is the area that's actually
just below the cheek, okay?
In here and in here.
Now, we don't want to remove that lovely look
that she's got from the cheeks,
so we don't want to overfill down here,
so she still has that lovely curvature
that she already has, but we just want to,
you can see, as we age, these are the little areas
that a lot of women aren't even noticing it on themselves,
that it's coming down, and they can't quite figure out
what it is that they're looking at in the mirror
and why their face is feeling
like it's having a downward pull.
And we can end up putting too much in the cheeks
and not addressing this.
So more and more these days, we're actually putting filler
into this area called the buccal hollows.
Gonna be using a cannula today instead of a needle.
A cannula actually looks like a needle,
but it's got a blunt end, and it's got a little hole
in the end of it where the filler actually comes out.
So instead of cutting through the tissues
like traditional needles do, it's actually dividing
through the planes of the tissue.
And the bonus of this is, it actually really reduces
our chances of bruising.
So Jen's gonna find this quite a comfortable experience.
I have to put a little bit of local anesthetic,
just a blip or two into the skin first,
'cause we do need to get the cannula into that area,
but after that, she's probably just going to feel pressure.
So as you can see, we're using the cannula,
we're just placing it into the skin
and passing it through the tissues.
And we just place little threads.
I haven't quite finished with the right side yet,
but as you can see, compared that now to the left side,
you can see this area is lifted up.
And the whole face just has a lovely structure there.
You don't see this gauntness that's coming in there anymore,
and it's just a nice flow down.
Even after completing one side, the right side,
you can see that when Jen smiles,
there's a lot less wrinkles forming on that side.
Okay, now you can have a look at the
before and after photo of Jen.
As you can see, by filling the buccal hollow area,
we've actually created a lovely transition
from her cheek down to her lower face.
It looks fuller, it looks now uplifting,
a lot fresher, and youthful.
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