Thank you for your question.
You submitted your question with two photos.
And you’re asking is it normal to have pain and tenderness 72 hours after undergoing lip
augmentation.
And you describe that you have some bruises and you’ve been applying ice.
And you are concerned about what to do moving forward.
Well, I can certainly share with you my opinion as to what you’re experiencing based on
the photos you’ve submitted in the absence of a physical examination.
A little bit of background, I’m a Board-certified cosmetic surgeon and Fellowship-trained oculofacial
plastic and reconstructive surgeon.
I have been in practice in Manhattan and Long Island for over 20 years.
Lip augmentation is a very popular procedure in our office.
And certainly, I’ve gone through my own evolution of developing techniques that I
find are the most useful and with minimal trauma to help my patients have nice looking
lips and further want to continue doing these procedures because of their experience.
So to begin with, I would say that just by looking at your photos that I would conclude
that more than likely your doctor did the procedure like many doctors do which is injecting
filler in multiple points from the outside so that different areas of the lip can be
improved.
You know, when we look at the anatomy of the lips, there is a desire to naturally place
the filler in certain key areas in order to get an outcome and a result.
And I can tell you that it is a very standard approach to use needles to then enter the
skin and place fillers.
A lot of times this is done with local anesthetic, like a block like a dental block to try to
make the lips numb so the patient experiences minimal pain.
Now that being said, it has been my preference to actually do these procedures using something
called blunt cannulas.
Although there is always a value of potentially using needles for let’s say fine lines above
the lip or for very specific areas that may not be reachable with the cannula, I would
say that the overwhelming majority of my patients, I’m essentially placing the filler using
minimal entry points and they can look pretty good immediately after with minimal or if
ever any bruising.
So that is a personal approach and a strategy that has been successful for me.
In your situation, what you are experiencing certainly is consistent with a certain degree
of trauma with bruising and therefore, it is essentially something that is likely to
resolve and with relatively minimal intervention.
I think that supportive care using something like anti-inflammatories, non-steroidals and
just letting the swelling that is causing most of the discomfort subside as the days
go on.
I think it’s best for you to of course speak to your doctor and I’m sure that if your
doctor has been doing this particular approach, they would probably be pretty familiar with
this situation of swelling and bruising and tenderness.
I think it is a reality when this type of approach is used.
It’s not always necessarily that common.
Not everyone gets that degree of bruising and swelling and this varies individual by
individual.
So again, without overstating, I think that there is a way for you to actually consider
discussing with your doctor a possible different approach in the future once this filler eventually
breaks down and goes away.
And I would say don't abandon hope getting future filler because of this experience.
It is important to just maintain this communication with your doctor who I’m sure wants you
to have a great result and probably put in a lot of time to get this result.
I mean aesthetically, I think your lips look really nice.
I think it’s just unfortunate that right now there’s enough bruising and swelling
that you feel uncomfortable but I think it is certainly within the range of normal for
what I think was the approach that was used.
So I hope that was helpful, I wish you the best of luck and thank you for your question.