Lip Spraying also called lip correction or lip padding is used to give the lips more fullness or to change the shape of the lips. It is performed by plastic surgeons. Since lip enhancement is an aesthetic procedure that is not medically necessary, it is not covered by private or public insurance. An exception can be reconstructive operations after accidents or congenital malformations.
Procedure
The whole procedure of lip injection takes about 30 minutes to one hour and can usually be performed on an outpatient basis. In order to avoid pain during the treatment, a local anesthetic is applied beforehand. There are several substances that can be injected into the lips, each has advantages and disadvantages.
Common to all substances is that they are injected at different points on the lips, giving them more fullness. After the procedure, swelling of the lips and bruises may occur. It is recommended to be careful with the lips during the first two days and to avoid stress, such as talking and similar things. In the following, the individual substances are presented in more detail.
Own fat
A great advantage of the own fat as a substance for lip spraying is its good tolerability. As fatty tissue is taken from another part of the body, no allergic reaction can occur, as allergies only occur to foreign substances. The patient’s own fat is usually taken with a thin needle from the stomach or thigh.
Before it can be injected into the lips, the fat must be processed and cleaned. The disadvantage of the autologous fat method is that the fat is usually reabsorbed by the body quite quickly, thus reducing the effect of the injection. Unfortunately, it is not possible to predict how quickly and to what extent the breakdown occurs in the individual patient, so that no predictions can be made as to how long the effect of the measure will last.
In order to counteract the degradation of the patient’s own fat, a little more is usually injected to prevent the lips from collapsing too quickly back to their old size. Unfortunately, after the use of own fat, hardening of the lips can occur, which may have cosmetically undesirable consequences. A guideline for durability is a period of between six months and one year before the injection should be repeated.
