While the most common type of lip enhancement is done with injectable fillers this is far less requested by men. Men typically prefer more permanent solutions and, in my experience, often present with more significant lip issues. The amount of vermilion exposure is less, the cupid’s bow is not very pronounced and the mouth corners may be downturned. Besides that injectable fillers often have limited impact on these type of lip problems most men have limited interest in treatments that need to be repeated with some frequency to maintain their effects.
Surgical changes to the lip, the upper lip in particular, are more appealing to men and a variety of techniques are available to do so. Subnasal lip lifts and vermilion advancements are the two approaches which have various effects on the upper lip. The well known subnasal lip lift has a good central upper lip lifting effect while keeping the scar away from the lip up under the nose. It does not however have any effect on the outer third of the upper lip or the mouth corners. Vermilion advancements can change the shape and increase the size of any portion of the lip and even a mouth corner lift is a form of vermilion advancement. It does place a scar at the vermilion-skin junction so this is always an aesthetic tradeoff for its profound direct effects.
For some men the combination of a subnasal lip lift and corner of mouth lift can provide improvement of the mouth area with limited scarring. For the subnasal lip lift for men a good rule is too not remove more than 1/4 to 1/3 of the philtral length. The operation is not reversible so caution is advised. Some men may have a more convex upper lip profile particularly up near the nasal base. With the subnasal skin excised fat and some muscle can be excised centrally to create a deeper valley between the philtral columns.
male corner of mouth lift viideo Dr Barry EppleyFor the corner of mouth lift the pennant excision technique works well with a maximum 7mm length for the base of the pennant. This provides a visible upturn to the mouth corner but keeps the scarring restricted to the vermilion-skin junction and its length along the outer upper lip limited as well.
The combination of a subnasal lip lift and corner of mouth lift provides an effective upper lip change that preserves 2/3s of the upper lip from many scar.
Dr. Barry Eppley
World-Renowned Plastic Surgeon