There’s a New Way to Enhance Your Pucker: With VOLBELLA®, Philadelphia Patients Can Get the Look They Want

For more than a decade, millions of men and women have relied on facial fillers like JUVÉDERM® to reduce the appearance of wrinkles and help them achieve fuller lips. Now, there’s a new member of the JUVEDERM® family: With the addition of JUVEDERM VOLBELLA®, Philadelphia women and men can reduce lip lines and wrinkles while maintaining a soft, natural feel for one year.

In June 2016, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved VOLBELLA® for use in lip augmentation and to reduce the appearance of wrinkles and lines in the lips. Specifically, VOLBELLA® is used to add volume to the lips themselves, and to treat perioral rhytids, also known as “perioral lines.” Rhytid simply means wrinkle, while the perioral region refers to the area around the mouth.

Like other wrinkles on the face, perioral wrinkles around the mouth are often caused and exacerbated by natural aging, exposure to sun, and smoking. There have been other treatments for such wrinkles, but VOLBELLA® has many excited because it is less painful than other procedures and delivers a more natural appearance, as 98 percent reported that they were able to achieve their desired appearance.

VOLBELLA® contains a small amount of the anesthetic lidocaine, which helps reduce pain at the injection site. Other methods of treating wrinkles around the mouth can sometimes be painful, which is why patients and physicians welcome the decrease of discomfort of the treatments. And most importantly, patients are extremely pleased with their treated lip appearance.

Treating the perioral region has also proven challenging as some existing treatments can sometimes result in an artificial look. VOLBELLA®, however, is capable of adding fullness to the lips while maintaining a soft look to the delicate areas around the mouth. Similar to the rest of the JUVÉDERM^® family, it is used to reduce the appearance of facial wrinkles by filling in tissue that loses collagen, elastin, and hyaluronic acid as we age.

Our skin naturally loses elasticity and moisture as we age, which contributes to the appearance of wrinkles. These wrinkles can vary in depth and often times do not respond to topical solutions or moisturizers, which is why your physician may recommend VOLBELLA® as a way to give you back a young, healthy appearance where other treatments can’t provide the desired results. Like other fillers, VOLBELLA® is so effective because it actually gets under the skin to fill in the areas that aging and hereditary factors have damaged, giving this skin a healthier appearance once more.

The FDA has determined that VOLBELLA® is safe and effective based on clinical trials in which 168 patients were treated with the injectable with positive results.

One physician who investigated the clinical trials commented, “Many of my patients are very bothered by the lines that can appear around the lips, known as perioral rhytids. Additionally, when seeking lip augmentation, patients want a smooth, result that is not drastic. JUVEDERM VOLBELLA® adds fullness to the lips and softens the appearance of the lines around the lips. With JUVEDERM VOLBELLA® I am able to subtly enhance my patients' pout.”

Facial fillers like JUVEDERM VOLBELLA® are also growing in popularity. According to the American Society of Plastic Surgeons (ASPS), JUVEDERM® treatments increased by 8 percent year-over-year between 2014 and 2015.

As still a relatively new and exciting treatment, before moving forward with VOLBELLA®, Philadelphia patients will likely have lots of questions about what it can do for them. The professionals at Eastern Cosmetic Surgery Institute are a strong place to start. Dr. Timothy M. Greco, who is double-board certified in facial plastic surgery and head and neck surgery, and his staff have the information and a wealth of experience to help women and men achieve the results they are looking for. Call them at (610) 664-8830 today.