Will The FATMA Procedure Make My Lip More Even?

Q: Dr. Eppley, I am interested in the FATMA lip augmentation procedure. I was born with a strawberry mark on my top lip. I had two surgeries to remove it, one at 6 months old and the other one at six years old. This has left me with a notch deformity in my upper lip. I am now looking into the FATMA procedure to help enhance the top lip to look more even and natural.

A: The FATMA lip procedure, as you undoubtably know, is an acronym for combining fat grafting with a mucosal advancement. While the acronym makes it sounds like it new and novel, the reality is that such lip reshaping procedures have been done for decades. The most common use of these two procedures historically is in reconstruction of the cleft lip deformity of which there is often a notch deformity at the vermilion. An internal V-Y mucosal advancement/roll out is done to lengthen and level the deficient vermilion edge and then a fat graft is added underneath it for volume. In this case the fat graft is usually a solid composite dermal-fat graft. The so named FATMA aesthetic lip reshaping procedure applies these same principles to a small but normal shaped lip using two internal muscosal advacements and fat injections. Whether your lip deformity should be treated by which variation of the FATMA procedure awaits seeing some pictures of it.

Dr. Barry Eppley

Indianapolis, Indiana