Lip Enhancement Surgery

Plastic surgeons have been enhancing lips for decades, but today more people are considering lip enhancement. Fuller lips, younger lips, less grumpy lips and improved smiles are the goals.
Non-invasive: Rejuvenation of your lips can be simple and temporary using cosmetics. There are new chemical/mechanical formulas that irritate the skin of your lips to enhance the color. Lip liner makes your lips seem bigger and keeps your lipstick from running, and many of the newer lipsticks will not run once they are applied. Tattooing, also performed to permanently color lips, is called permanent makeup, but it often fades over time. "Permanent makeup" is done by a specially trained technician using sterile technique, and is very technician-dependent. Like any procedures, there may be downsides (misplaced color, running of color, scarring of the lips, effect of the iron pigment in MRIs, etc.)
Don't forget the teeth under the lips! They support the lips and contribute to your appearance. Many times adjusting the teeth, modifying dentures or bridges or enhancing your teeth enhances your lips and mouth.
Invasive techniques for enhancing lips range from "fillers" injected directly into the lips to laser surgery that resurfaces your skin and eliminates wrinkles. The skin of the lips can be removed or rearranged surgically to remodel the lip contour. Fat, or dermis fat, can be grafted or transplanted to your lips to fill them out or reshape them.
Fillers are used to fill wrinkles, sharpen the edges and make the lips fuller, and can be temporary or permanent. Temporary fillers range from the old workhorse of bovine collagen to the newest temporary fillers approved by the FDA made from hyaluronic acid. In between are human collagen derived products. Skin testing is not necessary prior to use of human derived tissue fillers and hyaluronic acid based fillers.
Many people feel that they have a sad or grumpy expression because the corners of their mouth are slightly down-turned. This is due to heredity and has little to do with your mood. Unfortunately this can influence how others see you. Skin can be removed and rearranged at the sides of your mouth to upturn the corners of your lips. It does leave a scar at the sides of your lips, but you are trading a "grumpy" expression that people can see from across the room for a scar that someone might see from eight inches. Wearing lipstick helps camouflage this.

Laser skin resurfacing, dermabrasion or deep chemical peels can eliminate or reduce wrinkles around the mouth. It is very successful in diminishing vertical lines around your mouth as well as reducing the creases at your cheek and lip fold. The CO2 laser carefully removes the outer layer of skin and shrinks the next layer, effectively tightening the skin. Dermabrasion sands off the outer layer of skin, and often softens or eliminates fine lines. Both the CO2 laser and dermabrasion involve at least a week-long recovery period. The postoperative redness associated with skin resurfacing can easily be camouflaged with makeup in about ten days. There are other lasers and treatments that heal faster that can be used for resurfacing the lips, but they do not penetrate as deeply and there is less resolution of wrinkles. Some chemical peels help with the wrinkles, but they also do not penetrate as deeply and wrinkles are less resolved. Chemical peels that eliminate the wrinkles the best also make the skin lighter in color and take much longer to heal.
Surgical techniques, resurfacing and fillers can be performed alone or simultaneously. These procedures may complement each other, enhancing different parts of the lips. They can also be performed at the same time as other procedures such as facelifts and eyelid lifts. If you want to rejuvenate your lips, do your researches, choose your surgeon carefully, and enjoy your new lips!