Are you looking for the perfect lip augmentation treatment? Then, you may have come across lip fillers, which have gained traction as a remedy for wrinkles, lines, and sagging skin on and around the lips. When injected into the lips, lip fillers make them fuller, plumper, and more symmetrical. The changes may sometimes go unnoticed, but they significantly enhance your general facial appearance and increase your self-esteem.
While lip fillers will help you achieve your desired outcomes, there are often cases of lip fillers gone wrong, leading to poor results. Therefore, it is crucial to understand the complications you are likely to encounter during and after the procedure.
In this article, we will look into the common potential complications of lip fillers gone wrong, the causes, and how you can effectively prevent and remedy them.
What Are Lip Fillers?
Lip fillers are a type of dermal fillers that you can use to add plumpness to the lips and make them even. They are mostly made of hyaluronic acid and may be laced with other materials such as collagen and biodegradable synthetic substances.
While lip fillers may not stop or reverse the aging process, they temporarily eliminate the need for invasive surgical procedures, giving you that look you desire. This has convinced more and more people to get the injections, hence the ever-rising numbers from the 3.4 million people who got lip fillers in 2020, according to the American Society for Aesthetic Plastic Surgery.
Before we get into the complications that come with lip fillers gone wrong, let's look at the procedure and how lip fillers work to achieve your desired results.
The Lip Filler Procedure
It takes proper preparation, a professional, well-performed procedure, and adequate aftercare to achieve a successful lip filler procedure. It starts with regular consultation with a certified, skilled, and experienced skin expert, who will assess various factors to determine if you are a fit for the treatment. Consultation will be aimed at determining:
- Your reason for getting lip fillers
- The current state of your lips
- What you expect the treatment to achieve
- If you have any conditions that may affect the treatment's results.
After approving you for the procedure, your practitioner will book you a session and give you instructions on how to prepare for the procedure. On the treatment day, they will apply an anesthetic to numb your lips and minimize the amount of pain you will feel during the procedure. Lidocaine is the most common numbing for the lips, as it takes effect quickly and makes you comfortable throughout the procedure.
After about 30 minutes, your lips should be ready, and your practitioner will use a thin needle or a microcannula for lip injection to inject the filler into marked sections of the lips. Some of the common parts of the lips that can be injected include:
- The upper lip just between the lips and the nose.
- The cupid's bow, which is the horizontal raised part in the middle of the upper lip.
- The edge of the lips
- The corners of the lips, which may appear sunken and create an unusual facial expression.
- The wet-dry border which divides the dry lips from the inner, moist part of the mouth.
According to the National Library of Medicine, the lips are delicate, so the needles must not go any deeper than 2.5mm to avoid injuring lip vessels. The procedure should take between 30 minutes and two hours, after which your doctor may apply cold compresses if you still feel a lot of pain and inflammation.
After the procedure, you can leave immediately you get aftercare tips and instructions from your practitioner. Afterward, you have to look out for various signs that point towards serious complications or lip fillers gone wrong.
10 Complications of Lip Fillers Gone Wrong that You Should Look Out For
An effective lip filler procedure should always prioritize your well-being and aesthetic goals. However, there are various side effects and complications that can arise from lip fillers gone wrong, and these depend on how well every step of the process is handled. Here are some complications that you should be aware of.
Lumps and Bumps
After a lip filler procedure, it's usual to experience lumpiness on the injected parts of the lips, but this should go down within hours as the filler settles. However, in some cases, the bumps persist if the practitioner removes the needle from the skin before completely injecting the filler. This causes the filler to collect on the outermost surface, resulting in unpleasant-looking lumps on the lips.
Bumps on the lips may also be set off by an allergy or appear as a result of hypersensitivity in active autoimmune patients. In this case, the lumps are harder and more difficult to get rid of. Moreover, when your practitioner chooses a thicker filler than is necessary, the results of your procedure may be bumpy lips and an uneven texture.
Filler Migration
Sometimes, the filler material may migrate or be displaced from its initial placement. This is a common problem if your doctor injects a light filler or injects it incorrectly on the lips. When the filler moves from the intended section of the lips, it leads to asymmetrical and uneven results, which are a far cry from your initial expected outcomes.
Prolonged Swelling and Bruising
If you're not new to skin treatment, you may argue that swelling and bruising appear almost immediately after any skin treatment that involves the use of needles, and you're right. This also applies to a lip filler procedure, but the swelling should disappear within 48 hours after the procedure. Any longer than that is a sign of lip fillers gone wrong, and it could take some time to reverse.
During a lip filler procedure, localized swelling and bruising is caused by blood vessel injury if the treatment is performed by an unqualified or unskilled practitioner. Remember, the lips are a small part of the body, but they are delicate and any procedure performed to enhance their appearance should be done carefully.
Infections
Allergic Reactions
Allergic reactions to lip fillers are rare but fatal. They are characterized by prolonged redness and itching, warmth around the lips, and flu symptoms like fever. This is mostly caused by a reaction to the linking or agents used to make filler gel or the anesthetic formulas used to numb the lips.
Excessive Pain and Discomfort
Pain and discomfort are also common side effects of lip fillers, but they should not last for more than 48 hours after the procedure. However, if the pain persists up to the third day or until the pain killers prescribed by your doctor are finished, you need to visit your practitioner for a checkup. These complications may be a result of incorrect injection or injury of blood vessels.
Necrosis
As your doctor may inform you before getting your lips filled, necrosis is one of the serious complications of a lip filler procedure. It refers to the death of tissue around your lips, which occurs when your practitioner injects the filler directly into the bloodstream through the blood vessels around the lips. This obstructs blood flow in the surrounding areas.
Due to lack of oxygen in the lip tissue, necrosis causes severe pain, purple lips, and prolonged swelling, These symptoms manifest gradually after the procedure, and you must be careful to avoid missing them.
Asymmetrical Appearance
Asymmetry is one of the most noticeable complications of lip fillers gone wrong, as it is visible immediately after the procedure. The injected areas may appear larger and plumper, causing unnatural and disproportional lips. However it's important to give it time as in some cases, the filler eventually settles and evens out, achieving the desired results.
Bleeding
Every procedure that involves puncturing the skin is likely to cause bleeding. However, after injecting a lip filler, the bleeding should not last for more than 15 minutes. Otherwise, excessive bleeding may point to a ruptured blood vessel, and your doctor should take care of that.
Cold Sore Awakening
A lip filler procedure can cause trauma to the skin and tissue around the lips. This may trigger and reactivate HSV-1, the main cause of oral herpes, and therefore cold sores could appear shortly after the procedure. According to the World Health Organization, 67% of the world's population under age 50 carry this virus, so there is a big chance of developing treatable cold sores after the procedure.
Discoloration
After a lip filler procedure, you may observe your lips turning white. Purple, or dusky. This is mainly caused by vascular occlusion, the blockage of blood around the injection site as a result of overfilling or swelling.
Causes of Lip Filler Complications
There are various factors that determine the success of your lip filler procedure and if it goes wrong. Here are some of them.
- When the medical practitioner performing the procedure is not well-trained and qualified, they may not understand how to correctly inject the filler to produce your intended outcomes . Additionally, they may not be able to determine your suitability for the procedure right from the consultation stage. This increases the risk of complications such as allergic reactions, swelling, and asymmetrical appearance.
- Your doctor may be qualified, but if they lack the proper technique to apply the lip fillers, you could end up with a botched procedure caused by injury to blood vessels, wrong injection points, and overfilling. On the other hand, an experienced doctor knows how to assess your lip structure and treat every patient using the right technique and according to their unique needs.
- Poor choice of products could also cause a lip filler procedure to go wrong. Choosing the right products comes down to proper assessment of allergies, personal preferences, and the injection site. This not only applies to the lip filler but also the numbing cream. Some patients are allergic to lidocaine, which is the main numbing agent used for lips, so alternatives such as benzocaine and tetracaine would be more suitable.
- Ignorance is a common cause of lip filler complications. Sometimes your injector may choose to perform the procedure without finding out your preferences, and this may result in looks that son't fit your expected outcomes. To avoid this , a good doctor will always ask you about your expected outcomes and involve you fully during the treatment.
- You've gotten your lip fillers and you're probably wondering, what next? Well, the work is not done yet, because it takes proper aftercare to avoid falling victim to the side effects of the treatment. However inconvenient some measures such as avoiding smoking and makeup may seem, every detail is crucial to ensuring the treatment is a success.
How Can I Avoid or Remedy Lip Fillers
Complications?
Lip fillers gone wrong can be a nightmare, but the good news is that most of the causes of lip filler complications are avoidable, and most complications are reversible. Here's how you can avoid these side effects.
Choose the Right Practitioner
This is the first dilemma you have to face when looking to inject lip fillers. Once you identify them as your preferred mode of treatment, you have to reach out to a professional and start the consultation stage.
The perfect practitioner should be certified, experienced, and skilled in the field. You can perform your due diligence by researching them, reading reviews online, and looking for recommendations from previous patients. The findings should guarantee you that you're dealing with a professional who will handle all your needs, from preparation for the treatment to the procedure, aftercare, and follow-up appointments.
Be Frank
As much as you need a qualified practitioner for a lip filler procedure, you also need to communicate with them, especially during the consultation stage. Therefore, you should answer all their questions truthfully and reveal anything that may be relevant and could affect the procedure.
Cooperating with your injector and providing all the necessary details is key to enabling your doctor perform a full assessment, determine whether you are suitable for the procedure, and help you prepare adequately.
Go For Quality
With the advancement of cosmetic treatments, procedures have also become costly, forcing people to opt for cheaper alternatives. However, cheaper products such as lip fillers may be duplicated, expired, or improperly stored, leading to complications such as lumpiness and allergic reactions when they are injected into the lips, and they may not always achieve the desired results.
If you're looking to get lip fillers, you need to get a qualified practitioner and ensure that they get their products from a trusted brand, such as Diaminy, which offers FDA-approved lip filler products for a safe and effective procedure.
Proper Aftercare
Aftercare is a crucial aspect of any cosmetic procedure. In lip filler treatments, it plays a major role in the healing process and determines the efficiency of the procedure.
Failure to adhere to post-procedure instructions may lead to complications such as asymmetry, prolonged swelling, and filler migrations. Failure to adhere to practices such as proper hygiene, not applying makeup, and avoiding alcohol and smoking after lip fillers will go a long way in ensuring that you have a complication-free procedure.
Dissolve
If the side effects of lip fillers gone wrong persist, you should consider dissolving the fillers to avoid any more complications. For this purpose, your practitioner may use hyaluronidase, which breaks down the filler and makes it unable to cause any side effects.
After two or three dissolving sessions with increased doses of hyaluronidase, your filler should have completely dissolved, and with it goes the frustrating side effects.
Takeaway
Lip fillers are an effective way of adding volume to your lips to keep them proportional, even, and youthful-looking. However, in rare cases of lip fillers gone wrong, you are likely to encounter various side effects and complications, some more severe than others. In some cases, proper post-care of your lip fillers is enough to handle these complications, but in extreme cases, you may have to dissolve them and get a fresh procedure.
Have you committed to lip fillers as your preferred lip augmentation procedure? If yes, Diaminy is your go-to top consumer brand for every cosmetic product and equipment you need, including lip fillers and microcannulas for lip fillers. Reach out today and we'll guide you on how to make your aesthetic dreams come true!
