Tissue leftover from facelift can help plump lips

By Lisa Rapaport (Reuters Health) - Women getting cosmetic surgery to lift up sagging cheeks and jowls may be able to use some of the tissue removed during the procedure to plump up their lips, a small U.S. study suggests. Five years after getting a facelift followed by lip augmentation using leftover tissue, patients still had significantly fuller lips than they did prior to the procedure, though the results weren’t as pronounced as they were at three months or one year, the study found. “This technique offers patients undergoing a facelift a way to use their own tissue which would otherwise normally be discarded to plump the lips with minimal risk for complications,” said lead study author Dr. Matthew Richardson, a private practice plastic surgeon at Texas Facial Aesthetics in Frisco, Texas.