Filler Materials Procedure
Filler materials are used to fill hollows, wrinkles and increased signs of age. They must generally be repeated every six months or so. The most recent generation of fillers approved by the FDA are hyaluronic acid. The most commonly used products are Juvederm and Restylane.
A number of cadaver materials are available on the market, including alloderm, dermologen, Fascion. Because of the added expense and no long term effectiveness, plus the unpleasant reality of using cadaver material, we do not use these materials in our practice.
Several products, although available internationally, are not FDA approved and not available in the United States. We strongly believe and trust in the American medical system and their rigorous scrutiny as to the safety of new products, particularly since some filler substances that are “permanent” contain emulsified plastic materials. Many practitioners use these fillers on their patients. Although legally obtained in the European and Canadian market, they are still not approved in America. It is amazing that even the most sophisticated plastic surgery patient would “fall for” non approved fillers.
Most recently, an unlicensed practitioner injected silicone into some of his “patients”. He eventually landed in prison, but not before disfiguring many prominent women forever. Unfortunately, patients who were injected with silicone only discovered the disasters of chronic infections after many years of use. When a permanent, non-autologous substance becomes infected, they can never be cured. We cannot emphasize enough how damaging facial silicone injections can be, both from an appearance and health standpoint.
Certain synthetic permanent substances are available for “threading” under wrinkles and into the lips. These include Gortex and SAM. This technique is initially appealing because it is easy to do and the material is available from a box. We oppose the use of these products, however, because of the extremely poor aesthetic results we've seen. Many of our patients who've had this procedure done elsewhere, have noted: “I have a shoelace under my lip” or subtle three-dimensional distortions underneath the smile lines where these materials were placed. We have had to do painstakingly procedures to remove the material in a number of patients.
Our most recent development, Livefill®, is a permanent, autologous material (coming from the patient’s own tissue). This procedure originated in this office and has proved to have a higher success rate than fat injections. These studies have been presented by Dr. Moelleken at ASAPS and ASPS meetings and are published in the Journal of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery.
