Fillers, like collagen and Restylane and Juvaderm are very common and very popular for correcting lines and wrinkles, some scars, creases and lots of other contour problems. But to determine whether filler treatments are right for you, like any other procedure, you need to know what are the advantages and what are the disadvantages and what are the pro’s and con’s. So let me tell you. There are many advantages to fillers. First of all, they’re fast. Treatments can take five minutes to fifteen minutes, and maximum a half an hour you’re in and out of the office. Second, they’re relatively inexpensive for cosmetic procedures compared to any type of cosmetic surgery. Third, there’s no general anesthesia, so you don’t have to be concerned about side effects from general anesthesia. Fourth, because many of the fillers are not permanent, if you’re unhappy with the result, you have you don’t have to live with it for the rest of your life, it will wear off over a period of a couple of months. Next, there’s just not much pain involved with the injection of fillers, particularly with the new line of topical anesthetics that we have that diminish discomfort and also some of the new fillers actually have anesthesia right inside the filler material so that makes it less uncomfortable. And last, there’s very little downtime from filler treatments and usually you can go right back to work. You may want to put a little make up on, but usually you can go right back to whatever you were doing in life. In terms of disadvantages, well, a lot of advances in decreasing the discomfort but there is still some pain involved in filler treatments and that’s very personal as to how you judge the severity of that pain. Because most of these are not permanent you do have to have repeat treatments somewhere between three and nine or twelve months later. So, it’s an ongoing treatment which of course involves ongoing cost. In rare occasions there can be allergic reactions which result in red bumps at the location of the filler that go away after a couple of months and that’s annoying. And you can get bruising as a result of the injections and that’s not a function of the technique of your doctor, it’s because the filler injections go deep and you just can’t tell if there are any blood vessels there. But last and most important there are just certain limitations to what fillers can do because fillers restore lost volume but they don’t restore lost elasticity so as your skin continues to sag there’s a certain point when fillers just don’t do enough for you and if you want that corrected than you do have to have cosmetic surgery. So those are the pro’s and con’s of fillers to help you decide… are filler treatments right for you.
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