Silicon lips with Silikon?

Silicon injections in the face and lips with silikon is a plastic surgery topic that creates a lot of debate amongst the plastic surgeon community. Lets look at what silicone can do to enhance the lips and restore facial volume loss. Hopefully you have a good sense of humor and get a chuckle out of the images I’ve provided.

Debate over safety of lip plumping and nasolabial wrinkle treatment with Silicone/silikon

Silicone for injections into facial wrinkles as a filler, or for lip augmentation is not approved for cosmetic use by the FDA. Some physicians hate this product and declare it downright dangerous. Other surgeons use it for everything from acne scarring to aging grooves and wrinkles on the face which include lips, the nasolabial folds, grooves and hallowing around the eyes and temple area. It can also be used for aging grooves and wrinkles on the hands and neck (that’s scary!). Some doctors use it to restore facial volume in patients who have lipatrophy or loss of volume as a consequence of disease. The good thing about the silicone is that it can be both precise and permanent. The bad thing is that lumps and nodules can form rock hardened capsules around it which are hard to correct or get rid off. Sometimes complication nodules can be broken up with steroid injections other times the silicon nodules and surrounding scar tissue have to be excised surgically.

Silicon injections are a permanent yet higher risk alternative to the popular temporary lasting injectables such as Restylane, Juvederm and Radiesse. Have you read the horror stories about women getting deformed and even dieing from complications after having silicon injected into their breasts and derriere to enhance their curves? Regardless of the news stories, silicone injections are evidently here to stay . Most women wouldn’t inject this stuff into their body if their life depended on it. However some women really are in fact having this stuff injected into their face even though it is not FDA approved for such purposes. Silicon for facial and lip volume enhancement is risky business yet some women are taking the plunge. I wouldn’t have silicone injected into the neck or eye vicinity unless you paid me a million dollars. In my opinion, it would do little good for the neck, and skin near the eye area is so thin a lump could easily peer through.

Risky business …Would you dare get silicone injections?

Why are they doing it? Plain and simple, women want to save money on the temporary fillers and some are taking risks to get something permanent. It boils down to money and taking on a risk of complications for the hope of a good permanent result. Most of the physicians that do silicon treatments are using the product brand called Silikon-1000 to cosmetically enhance the face. A majority of patients can be thrilled with the results and the complications for the lucky ones are few.

Mictodroplet silikon injection technique

The micro-droplet injection technique is most favorable as only a miniscule amount of the material is injected in a treatment. Then, the body forms its own volumizing tissue around the injection site in the months after the treatment. Women take a gamble hoping that the volumizing tissue plumps imperceptibly under the skin rather than turning up as visible lumps that show. The reputable plastic surgeons who use silicon-1000 do so with an abundance of caution as they obviously would like to avoid having complications just as much is not more than their patients. Most surgeons won’t use silicone but the reputable ones that do become specialists and can charge between 400 and 1500 dollars per silicone injection treatment.

Risk of granulomas. The risk is real.

The permanence of the silicon creates the money saving temptation, but the possible complications of lumps and nodules creates the fear of its use. It’s all about the bumps and nodules because elementally, that’s exactly how this product is working. The material is alien and once injected your own tissue creates a responsive capsule around it thereby creating even more volume. The rub is that you don’t want the capsule to show through your skin. Some doctors say unwanted visible bumps and nodules can be treated with Kenalog injections (a steroid) but in reality the lumps can become hard as little unbreakable rocks. They are literally undesolvable. Because the imflammatory response to the product is unpredictable, most plastic surgeons think silicone is an extremely unpredictable and purely unsafe profile and should never be used as a facial or lip filler.

Plastic surgeons who use silikon-1000, it‘s off-label use

If you are interested in finding out more regarding silicon injections in your lips or nasolabial folds (wrinkle grooves from the nose around the mouth), you should research the risks carefully and find a skilled doctor to get a consultation. You would want to find a doctor who has performed more than 1,000 microdroplet silicon injection procedures with the Silikon-1000. Silikon-1000 is what the doctors who do it are using for the microdroplet injections. Silikon-1000 is a medical grade silicon oil. It is important to know that this stuff is only FDA approved specifically for intraocular injections. Any other use of it (including for cosmetic purposes as described here) is considered to be off-label. In other words, it is not illegal but it is not FDA endorsed for cosmetic purposes either. Some doctors use the product to rebuild volume in the face of patients with diseases such as HIV. They suffer from loss of their facial fat.

Silicone Microdroplet technique

Would you risk injecting silicon into your face? The micro droplet technique involves injecting only a small amount of silicon and then waiting to let the body form its own healing around it. With the microdroplet technique it is not so much the volume of silicon that creates the volume enhancing effect. It is also the collagen that gets created by the cells around it called fibroblasts in response to the silicon. Essentially, your body reacts to the silicon drop going in and builds up lumps around them. If the lumps are under the skin and spaced and heal in a lucky and natural looking manner, it is a great way to create facial volume or lip volume. If however, too much is injected or you own tissue creates excess healing/scar tissue around it you can wind up with the lumps that are visible through to the skin and they are very hard to correct and/or remove.

If too much silicon is injected the silicon can set in like a hardened rock, or rocks. A silicone complication looks like small pebbles stuck under the skin. You might remember Lisa Rinna who went public and spoke of her complications after excessive silicon lip injections. She had to have a complete lip surgery to correct her pebbled droopy lips and went public to caution women about the potential pitfalls of silicon.

Is it safe to be injected into the nasal fold with silicon droplets?

Some doctors use the microdrops in the nasolabial folds and some don’t. It takes a few months for your own collagen to heal around the injected silicon droplets. Since mouth movements create perpetual motion in that area of the face, some say that you risk that the droplets and surrounding healing press out of the exact intended area creating irregularities. Since your mouth moves constantly, it is possible for shifts to happen along the course of the healing process or even years later as the draping of your skin changes with age.

I have heard of cheek lumps, nose lumps and lip lumps forming as a result of silicon injections. The nodules that form are extremely hard to get rid of and usually require surgery (similar to say removing a cyst under the skin per nodule). Silicon when it heals right and is injected with an abundance of caution can be a wonderfully soft tissue filler. But even a small micro drop injection can wind you up with a visually obvious lump under the skin. The plastic surgeons and dermatologists constantly get into the boxing ring when debating amongst themselves whether women should risk such injections or avoid them like the plague and be safe not sorry.

Safer alternatives to silikon lip augmentation and wrinkle plumping

Silikon injections are a coo for the brave and the lucky who risk the complications to get permanent plumping of the lips or nasolabial folds. Sans complications it can look great if done conservatively for a natural looking aesthetic result (no fish lips they are ugly!). However the product is known to migrate. Because the droplets can shift and cause granulomatous reactions some doctors still say to avoid it. The web is filled with horror stories about lumps not to mention horrified women who idiotically get this stuff injected into the eye area, neck, breasts and derrieres. Also, it is not FDA approved for cosmetic use. It may be safer to use a temporary but long lasting filler such as Restylane, Juvedern or Radiesse. Not for the faint of heart, Silicone microdroplets are risky. If you are conservative and practical minded it may be better to be safe than sorry.

Silikon is risky business. Be aware of the complications

If you do go for it you better be patient, fearless and well aware of the lumping risks and other possible negative reactions. Maybe you will luck out and avoid the lumps. Go to a reputable board certified doctor who specializes in Silicon microdrop technique and who has been doing the procedure cosmetically for years and years. You would want to get the most conservative, smallest of treatment and wait a significantly time period of at least several months before getting another conservative treatment. Remember, it is permanent and any excessive result will look ridiculously fake.

Women claim to have silicon complications years and years even decades after they have been treated. It is certainly conceivable seeing as the skin and face drape differently as one ages. Lumps that were hidden may become visible underneath skin that has thinned, sallow-ed and now drapes differently over the years. PS don’t ever get silicon injected into your jowls, breasts or bottom. I would not dare do that stuff around your eyes either. Bad, bad idea in my opinion! Follow the tag below for more articles on augmentation with silicone drops. Please know that the before and after photographs above are purely for entertainment purposes.