The Consultation, Procedure and Recovery
Dr. Schulman will examine you during your consultation. He will look at the size and shape of your lips, as well as the quality of the skin. He will then speak with you about your desires. Do you want to keep the existing shape of your lips, but just make things larger? Or, do you want to change the shape of your lips altogether?
He will also ask you about any past lip injections and your experience with those. All this information will help Dr. Schulman figure out if permanent lip implants are right for you. He may tell you that you should either start, or continue with, temporary lip fillers before committing to a permanent solution.
If lip implants are the right choice for you, Dr. Schulman will help you select the best implant size.
The procedure
Permanent lip implants are placed under local anesthesia, in the comfort of our office. You will have numbing medicine injected into your lips. After these injections, you will not feel any pain. A small incision is made in each corner of the mouth. Then a tunnel is made and the implant is inserted. Small stitches are placed in each corner incision.
These stitches are tiny and will fall out after a few days. The total time for this procedure is about 45 minutes.
The recovery
Bruising and swelling is normal. Most people will experience this for about 5-7 days. During this time, ice will help. Most people do not feel pain, but will feel a stiffness because of the swelling. Your lips will look larger than you want and the shape will not look as natural as you want. Do not worry.
This is to be expected and improves over the first few weeks. After about 2 weeks, you will look much better and your lips will be softer. As with any plastic surgery procedure, you will look even better as time goes on.
During one of your follow-up visits, Dr. Schlulman will show you how to do some simple massage exercises to your lips which will help your results.