Natural Lip Surgery in Harley Street, London

Lip augmentation is ideal for patients who have thin or disproportionate-shaped lips. Augmentation can be accomplished with surgery or the use of filler injections.

Lip Augmentation Techniques

Over the past decade a number of different techniques were used to augment the volume of the lip. These included fat transfer, silicone implant and the use of SMAS grafts from facelift surgery. What has emerged is that currently two techniques have remained that provide the best natural results.

One is the use of a 'customised' lip lift, that rotates the upper lip upwards that can result in a natural augmentation of the upper lip as swell as improving facial proportions and harmony.  

The second is use of specific hyaluronic fillers that are specially made for the lip and using a modern cannula technique to ensure smooth and even lip augmentation. These Injectable fillers (e.g. Volbella and/or Restylane) have an instantaneous effect, can be customised to improve lip line and definition, key is 'less is more' for a natural approach. Dr De Silva has found that many patients have excess filler that needs to be dissolved and reintroduced with a specific lip filler and lip technique to ensure a natural appearance. 

There are other fillers that can be used such as Alloderm, that have a long-term effect. Dr De Silva will not inject silicone into the lips as there have reported risks associated with this technique.

What causes lips to thin and lose volume?

The lips thin gradually as we age, with atrophy of the soft tissues and underlying teeth. Younger people have plumper lips that often have a natural S-shape with a sharp vermillion border (junction between the skin and lips) and central cupid’s bow.

Ageing of the lips results in a loss of volume, curvature, loss of cupid’s bow and increased vertical lines. Facial ageing of the lower third of the face includes volume loss of the cheeks and gravitational descent.

The smile lines are called nasolabial folds and run from the side of the nose to the corner of the mouth. Often thin lips occur in association with other changes in the face, such as deepening nasolabial folds.

In facial ageing, there is often loss of volume in the surrounding soft tissues which may lead to a downturning of the lips (increasingly sad appearance).

Large lips can be a consequence of ethnicity, a surgically overinflated lip or an unbalanced lip that does not match a person’s face. People who are endowed with an excessively generous lip size can benefit from a lip reduction (cheiloplasty) procedure.

The lips are the most prominent feature on the lower third of the face and are important in conveying emotion and attractiveness.

In a normal lip profile, the lips should be slightly parted, and the lower lip should lie only just behind the upper lip. With excessive protrusion, the lower lip looks disproportionally large.

The upper lip ideally covers two-thirds of the incisors, there are variations based on ethnicity and gender.

From the side profile, the nose, chin, and lips are in aesthetic proportion. In a face with a normal nose-chin-lip proportion, with a vertical line drawn through the upper lip, the lower lip passes several millimetres behind this line and the chin lies further behind the lower lip.

In men. the chin is a characteristic feature of sexual dimorphism and a relatively strong chin is an attractive feature.

There is a degree of art in the technique to reduce an oversized lip, as the size, shape and contour require both technical and artistic surgery to give a natural-looking result. With lip reduction surgery, the incision is placed inside the mouth and is invisible after surgery.

The procedure can be performed under local anaesthesia with or without sedation. It takes approximately 60 minutes to complete and about 2 weeks to heal. After surgery, the lips initially appear larger because of swelling but this soon resolves after a few weeks.