Dermal Fillers

Most dermal fillers are a gel of hyaluronic acid, a sugar the skin already makes and holds water with. Placed under the skin it occupies space, supports the tissue above it and draws in water, so a hollow lifts and a contour changes shape immediately.

Filler is placed at different depths for different purposes: deep against bone to restore the structural support lost with age, and superficially to soften a fixed line or add definition. The gels differ in firmness accordingly, and one product does not suit every site.

It lasts six to eighteen months depending on the product, where it is placed and how much the area moves, then breaks down naturally. Hyaluronic acid fillers can also be dissolved with an injected enzyme, which makes them the safer family to start with.

This is a Day Care treatment with no general anaesthetic. Numbing cream goes on for twenty to thirty minutes, and most fillers also contain local anaesthetic, so the area becomes numb as the first drops go in.

Your doctor assesses your face with you sitting upright, marks the points, and then places the gel either through a fine needle or through a blunt-tipped cannula passed under the skin from a single entry point. They will pause, ask you to sit up and look in a mirror, and shape the product with their fingers.

Allow twenty to forty minutes for the treatment and an hour in the clinic. You go home the same day. A review at two weeks, once the swelling has gone, is when the result is assessed and anything small is corrected.

Swelling and bruising are the whole of it, and they last three to seven days. Lips swell the most and can look noticeably larger for the first forty-eight hours, so do not plan a wedding or a photograph inside a week of treatment.

Apply a cold compress for the first evening, sleep with your head raised, and avoid strenuous exercise, steam, saunas, alcohol and facial massage for two days. Make-up can go on the next day. There is no time off work beyond what the bruising dictates.

The result is visible immediately and settles into its final shape at two weeks as the swelling resolves and the gel integrates. Judge it then. Your doctor will review you at that point and tell you when the area is likely to need topping up.