Can A Lip Lift Be Done Without Increasing the Lip Pout?

Q: Dr. Eppley, I would like to reduce the length of my upper lip. I have attached two pictures, which although low in quality (web cam shots), illustrate my concerns. My upper lip is too strong for my face – dominant, long and protruding, with considerable vermilion show. The distance between the root of my nose and the pink park of my upper lip is 18 mm. If I’m aiming for a 14 cm distance, does this mean you will need to remove only 4 mm of skin? Or does the skin incision has to be greater than that to achieve a shortening of the upper lip of 4 mm? My other concern is that as a man I don’t my lip pout to increase from doing this procedure.

A: To reduce an 18mm philtral lip height to 14mms using a subnasal lip lift technique, you need to remove just 4mms. But without question that will cause some increased lip pout. By definition, a subnasal lip lift causes increased vermilion  show. That will settle down over a few months but may or may not return to what it was before the lip lift. That is why you can either do it in two staged of 2 -3 mms each or do a 4mm skin exicison with an internal mucosal roll of the upper lip. You do have a lot of vermilion so I don’t think this will give you excessive tooth show. If you do the two together (subnasal lip lift and horizontal mucosal excision, you may want to do that under some IV sedation with local injections)

Dr. Barry Eppley

Indianapolis, Indiana