Saline Lip Implants

I noticed a new (to me) product at the 2009 ASAPS meeting: a saline-filled lip implant. I kid you not.

Known as VeraFIl, it has actually been FDA approved for about a year. Essentially, it is a tapered tubular implant with a silicone shell and a gore-tex outer coating. A tunnel is made in the substance of the lip under anesthesia, and the device is placed and filled – like some sort of miniature saline breast implant.

Theoretical advantages:
– permanent lip enhancement

Possible problems:
– encapsulation and firmness, with possible distortion of lip
– migration of implant (shifting)
– exposure of implant
– infection of implant
– difficulty of removal, with possible irreversible tissue changes / thinning of lip
– less shaping control than with injectable products
– deflation

We’ve tried lip implants before, with various companies that made Gore-tex tubes for lip augmentation. They felt, in my opinion, like “shoe leather” inside the lip, and thus were not realistically soft, like a lip should be. I didn’t use the product.

I have serious doubts that this generation of lip implants will be significantly different.

The company claims that their new design fixes many of the problems with previous types of lip implants. As you can probably tell, I remain unconvinced.

Time will tell.