Services 》Lip Reduction
Lip Reduction
by Dr. Lih-Ren Jong
Eyes, nose and lips are located in front view of face. There are quite noticeable. Blepharoplasty and rhinoplasty are common practice in Asian countries to beautify eyes and nose. But lip aesthetics is neglected by most of plastic surgeons. Hyaluronic acid is a useful tool to augment lips, but related reports of lip reduction in Asian people are rare. People with thick lips usually purse their lips unconsciously to reduce show of lips. After lip reduction, they do not have to hide their thick lips.
It is hard to define beautiful lips. There is no universal standard of lip beauty. Beautiful lips in Caucasian country may be though to be too thick in Asian country.
There are some basic concepts:
- Lower lip should be thicker than upper lip. If upper lip is 1 cm in width, lower lip should be 1.5-1.7 cm in width.
- Lips will be thinner when aging. A person with thin lips looks older. It is recommended not to excise too much lip tissue. Number 1 reason is that it is hard to revise the surgery if lip is excise too much . Number 2 reason is that thin lips is not aesthetically acceptable.
- Lower edge of upper lip should be M shape (Mark as M' in below picture). A person with M shape upper lip looks like he or she is smiling. Presently thinner M shape upper lip with fuller lower lip is a preferred lip shape.
Upper left is Angelina Jolie's lips. Upper right is the ideal lips (Angela Baby) for Asian women.
Below are lips of some Asian woman's stars. (Fan Bing-Bing, Lin Chi-ling, Zhang Zi Yi, Vivian Hsu, Shu Qi).
Below are lips of some Asian man's stars.
From the left to the right: Kai Ko, Aaron Kwok, Takeshi Kaneshiro.
From the let picture to the right one: Rain (Jung Ji-hoon), Bae Yong-joon, Fukuyama Masaharu.
Men with small lips and obvious tubercle of upper lip look femine.
Unusually large lips aesthetically can make a person appear or feel unattractive. In addition, adverse stereotypical characterizations amplify this characteristic and associate it with being dumb or mentally slow.
Teeth is closely related with lips. Below right is typical dental relationship. Below right is a case with bimaxillary protrusion. Teeth protrude anteriorly which influences the lip posture. After correction of dental relationship, protruded lips will improve at the same time. Lip reduction surgery maybe is not needed. Lips appear thicker in people with small chin. Chin augmentation procedure is more important than lip reduction.
What is the reason why the lips look like smiling after lip reduction surgery?
Below left was before picture. Right was after picture. The width of lips become smaller after lip reduction surgery, but the surgery do not change the distance between the mouth corners. If the distance between mouth corners was 1, the before width of lips was 0.6. The after width was 0.4. Lip width became narrower. In another word, the mouth became wider porportionally. Wider mouth looked similar to smiling.
-
Anesthesia: After nerve block, lip will be numb. So that patients will not feel pain when local anesthesia is injected into lip. For nervous patients, IV general anesthesia can be applied to put patients to sleep before lip reduction procedure.
Operation procedure: Lips are full with blood vessels. So that it bleeds easily. Primitive way of lip reduction is clamping lip (to reduce bleeding), excising and suturing. But the excised lip tissue is a long strip. The most important step in lip reduction is design. The shape of excised lip should be custom-made.
Experience is needed to control lip which is slippery. Saliva will wash out preoperative making. Surgery without accurate marking will end with asymmetricity and irregularity.
Below left picture shows the marking of lower lip reduction. Below right show the appearance after surgery. It is hard to find where the scar is.
-
Below are case presentation.
Upper right is the piture of upper lip reducton on 3 years after surgery.
Upper right is 3.5 years after upper and lower lip reduction.
The other cases of upper lip reduction.
Above case underwent hyaluronic acid on lower lip at another clinic. Yellow arrow pointed to a vesicle on lower lip due to too superficial injection. Right picture showed the result of upper lip reduction and milking out hyaluronic acid.
The other cases of upper and lower lip reduction.
Left is before. Middle is one week after surgery. Right is several months after surgery.
If you have questions about lip reduction, please send the questions to mail@LRclinic.com.tw -
Lips that are too thin will look older. Hyaluronic acid is a filler that is often used to enrich lips.
Autologous fat can also be used to enrich lips, but the procedures are cumbersome, and the fat that gets into the lips will disappear.
Therefore, Dr. Zhong believes that hyaluronic acid will be better. The upper lip feels like a lip bead, and the lower lip is thick and will look good together.
-
1. Only take painkillers (white pills with the same ingredients as acetaminophen 500mg) for wound pain. One capsule at a time, one capsule at intervals of 4-6 hours.
2. Apply eye ointment (composed of Chlorotetracycline) to the wound thinly in the morning and evening.
3. Antibiotic (green-white capsule, ingredient Cephalexin 500 mg), take one capsule at a time after meals, three times a day.
4. The first three days after the operation can use ice compress to help reduce swelling and pain. On the fourth day, you can change the temperature compress to improve the swelling and bruise (the time of ice compress is 30 minutes and rest 30 minutes) Try to keep your head above your heart while sleeping to reduce swelling of the affected area.
5. If your lips swell up more than three days after the operation, please take a liquid or soft diet.
6. Some people are swollen after surgery, the mouth is not easy to close, and there will be temporary drooling.
7. Be careful of the wound when brushing your teeth.
8. Return to the clinic and remove the thread after one week. Some people will sew the wound's meat thread for a week.
9. Reduce your mouth expression in the first two weeks.
10. One to two months before the operation, there will be a temporary phenomenon of lips tightening when laughing.
11. The result of the operation will be stable after about three months.
If you live abroad, you may send your questions and pictures (such as eyes, etc) to mail@LRclinic.com.tw .
We will reply you as soon as possible.
