How to treat under eye fillers

Last week I had a client say to me, “I think of all the money that I have spent over the years on make-up, creams and lotions trying to get rid of under eye hollows, and all I really needed was to get under eye filler. Imagine how much money I could have saved”. That’s the kind of response that gives me great satisfaction as an injector. When it comes to injecting dermal fillers, as much as I love injecting lip filler, I think that the cheeks and under the eyes are my favourite place to treat. I love the effect that can be achieved by the careful placement of under eye filler and to the tears troughs: people often can’t believe the subtle transformation that occurs. It’s almost like someone has instantly had twelve hours of sleep, and the years can fall away.

WHAT SHOULD I EXPECT DURING UNDER EYE FILLER TREATMENT?
DOES UNDER EYE FILLER TREATMENT HURT?
With the technique of injecting dermal fillers using a blunt tipped cannula, we can achieve very accurate placement of filler in the cheeks, in the bags under the eyes and in the tear troughs. And instead of having to make multiple injection points with needles, we only have to use one injection point per side, as the cannula allows us access to the whole cheek, under the eyes, even all the way to the temples. That’s great for multiple reasons: firstly, less injection points means less chance of complications such as infection or bruising. Although dermal fillers are a cosmetic treatment, it’s important to remember that there are some small risks, and the less times we have to pierce the skin, the less chance of these complications. Because the cannula has a blunt tip, as it slides under the surface of the skin it tends to push away rather than go through small blood vessels, meaning even less chance of bruising and swelling afterwards.

We begin with cleaning the skin with some antiseptic. This will be repeated a few times, as coming from a surgical background, I like to clean the skin a lot! Then a small amount of ice to numb the cheeks before I inject a tiny amount of local anaesthetic into the cheek. This is probably the part of the procedure that stings the most to be honest. It’s the same type of local anaesthetic that gets used at the dentist, and it lasts for about as long: you may see the “whiteness” of the anaesthetic on the skin for the next forty-five minutes or so. After the skin is well and truly numb, a sharp needle is used to pierce the skin, and the blunt tipped cannula is passed under the skin. You shouldn’t actually feel very much at all, just a bit of “pushing”. It feels a bit strange, but people actually tolerate it very well. The cannula is passed to the tear troughs, or the under eyes bags and the under eye filler starts to be injected. Remember too, that the filler itself contains local anaesthetic, so pain is minimal.

WHAT TYPE OF FILLER IS BEST UNDER THE EYES?
Australian Law prohibits us from mentioning brand names in the advertising of prescription medications such as fillers and anti-wrinkle injections, but essentially fillers can be graded from thin to thick. For an area like the lips, which are made for eating and kissing, we want a filler type which is nice and malleable and relatively thin. For somewhere like the temples, or the cheeks, where the aim is to replace volume, we want to place something nice and thick which will really help hold up that tissue that’s started to drop. In the tear troughs and in the bags under the eyes we want a bit of a middle ground: not too thin that we don’t have enough support and structure, but not so thick that we see and feel lumps.

I like to stay in touch with my clients after their treatments, and for this reason I’ll usually give you a quick phone call in two or three day’s time just to make sure that everything is going along smoothly. I also like to make an appointment to see you back the clinic after two or three weeks for a review. This is because over the first few weeks the filler actually expands a little as it attracts water. Think of the filler molecule as a tree with lots of branches and leaves, and each leaf attracts some water, causing it to “plump up” a little.

An experienced injector needs to be looking two weeks into the future as they inject the filler, to predict how your tear troughs and under eye bags will look when the filler has expanded!

HOW MUCH FILLER DO I NEED UNDER THE EYES?
The answer to that question varies from person to person, as everyone will have experienced different amounts of volume loss over the years. As a general rule though, I think that anywhere from half a ml to one ml of filler injected per side is a reasonable amount to start with. Too little and you may not see much of a result and will be unsatisfied with things. Too much more in one go and you run the risk of starting to look “overfilled”. That’s certainly not to say that anyone with more than one ml of filler in each cheek is “overfilled”! Some people have a lot of volume loss and may even need much more filler than that to adequately restore their volume; it’s just that doing too much at one time may cause too much a change all at once. It’s best to fill slowly, over a period of months until your volume has been restored and you are back to looking your natural best. As I tell many of my clients, “it’s easy to put more in later, but harder to take it out if you don’t like it”.

HOW LONG DOES UNDER EYE FILLERS LAST?
Again, this varies greatly from person to person, but you’ll probably find that your filler lasts somewhere from six to twelve months, depending on what type of filler is used. As a general rule, the thicker filler types used for volume replacement tend to last longer than the thinner, more malleable fillers used in lips.

Related posts:

Our mission at Framee is to help long-distance families feel closer, by transforming idle screens in the home — like the quarter billion tablets left behind by iOS and Android upgrades — into photo…

Reading is one of the ways to acquire knowledge and we need it to grow

I feel myself so confused. I thought I would write about the new season (the last season) of the Game of Thrones, about my small travel in my city while dad was absent, about choosing the future…