Treating older lips with fillers: 3 crucial areas for injection

It can be more challenging to treat older lips with dermal fillers due to age-related changes, therefore it is crucial that you understand where to focus your attention so you can achieve a good aesthetic result for your older patients.

In this blog, Dr Tim Pearce will discuss the three areas of the lips to consider for treatment in older patients.

You can enjoy great educational learning on treating both old and young lips with Dr Tim Pearce’s 8D Lip Design training course – the world’s first online lip training with interactive 3D anatomy and injection animation.

Where to inject to restore older lips

When approaching lips in older patients there are three zones or areas to consider for enhancement and restoration.

• The lip body and vermillion border – These are the main parts of the lip that we regularly treat in younger patients to add volume and definition, and the same is true for the older patient.
• The retro-orbicularis fat pad – This fat pad depletes as people get older. It is not a common place to treat but can be addressed. The shrinking of the retro-orbicularis fat pad is noted as one of the reasons why patients present with severe lines and wrinkles around the mouth due to the significant loss of volume making the orbicularis oris muscle very dominant, even at rest.
• The hypodermic fat above the muscle – This is another common area to treat and to restore in older patients because it addresses the superficial lines and wrinkles.

If you treat any of these areas to completion, but in isolation, for example, you remove all the lines in the top lip by solely treating the hypodermic fat area, then you are at significant risk of causing disharmony to the face, leading to an unnatural look, unless you are extremely conservative in your approach, notes Dr Tim. This works for some patients who only require a little bit of treatment to achieve a slight improvement, for which they are happy.

However, if you treat all these areas in the lip, but without considering and treating the rest of the face, then equally you risk an unsatisfactory result as the mouth might not ‘fit’ correctly with the face, meaning it will stand out as having a different level of volume when compared to other areas where ageing and volume loss is apparent. Therefore, for a holistic approach, you must consider the whole face, even though you are primarily looking to restore the lips. Consider smaller volumes to achieve a smaller difference or smaller result and then you can gradually work towards improving their look without creating a dramatic and unnatural result in the lip area alone.

For more in-depth understanding of treating older patients for lip fillers, read Dr Tim’s other blog on the best filler injection techniques for older lips.

You can also treat yourself and buy a beautiful lip anatomy poster that is not only a lovely piece of artwork for your clinic but also an accurate tool that you can use to help when consulting your patients and explaining treatment plans.

If you have any further questions on lip treatments, techniques, or the differences between lip types with older and younger patients, then why not drop a comment to Dr Tim Pearce on Instagram.

8D Lip Design

With all the conflicting advice out there about lip filler treatments – vertical or horizontal? needle or cannula? – it can be difficult to know how to inject to create the lips your patient desires.

If you are suffering from technique overwhelm, worrying about causing a vascular occlusion (VO), or panicking about injecting thin lips, then Dr Tim Pearce’s brand-new ultimate lip course is going to teach you the different techniques, anatomy, and skills you need to create medically beautiful lips.

→ 8D LIP DESIGN COURSE 

Aesthetics Mastery Show

Older Lips – 3 Crucial Zones

In this episode, Dr Tim addresses the 3 zones to consider when treating older patients with lip filler.

Lip Filler eLearning Courses

If you want to increase your skills in lip treatment design or boost your confidence by learning how to handle complications, Dr Tim Pearce offers a range of comprehensive courses that are highly rated by our delegates:

• 8D Lip Design
• Elective Lip Filler Reversal
• Dermal Filler Complications Mastery

In addition, browse our FREE downloadable resources on complications.

Dr Tim Pearce eLearning

Dr Tim Pearce MBChB BSc (Hons) MRCGP founded his eLearning concept in 2016 in order to provide readily accessible BOTOX® and dermal filler online courses for fellow Medical Aesthetics practitioners. His objective was to raise standards within the industry – a principle which remains just as relevant today.

Our exclusive video-led courses are designed to build confidence, knowledge and technique at every stage, working from foundation level to advanced treatments and management of complications.

Thousands of delegates have benefited from the courses and we’re highly rated on Trustpilot. For more information or to discuss which course is right for you, please get in touch with our friendly team.