TAKEAWAY. Experiencing lumps in lips after injectable filler is extremely common—and lumps most often resolve naturally with time. Gentle lip massage 5-7 days after the treatment can help smooth any lumps and bumps in the lips.
Lumps are actually a common side effect after a dermal filler or lip enhancement treatment. Often they are a short-term problem, but if need be, they are totally correctable by a trained aesthetic medical professional.
While massage can sometimes improve mild symptoms such as moderate lumpiness or slight asymmetry, don't perform massage on your fillers unless instructed to do so by your plastic surgeon or injector.
The filler can take several weeks to soften and settle into your skin. This means that patients won't see the ultimate results of their treatment immediately. Although individual results will vary, many people achieve the full effect within two weeks after receiving their injections.
Generally, any lumps or bumps that appear after fillers will disappear on their own within one to two weeks. Give the treatment a couple of weeks to improve, applying ice regularly.
Massage can encourage the filler to be broken up by the body more quickly. But in practice this still takes a long time (like weeks of daily vigorous massage) to improve the outcome. This may also spread the product over a larger area causing more problems.
These usually resolve in a couple of weeks with massage or dilute injection of a steroid anti-inflammatory solution called kenelog. Another option is to dissolve the Hyaluronic acid completely with a protein called Hyaluronidase. This material is injected directly into the affected area.
Lumpiness is fairly normal after dermal fillers. Most often this is due to swelling immediately after a treatment. This should resolve within a week but rarely can take several weeks to fully resolve.
It is not likely that the filler products would move if you wait at least a few days before pressing really hard on the areas and having extractions. The hyaluronic acid fillers settle nicely into the skin, and once any swelling goes down, it would be pretty unusual for anyone to be able to displace them.
The Results Improve Over Time
Because these injections stimulate your body's production of collagen and elastin, the final results of treatment won't be seen for several weeks. Even as the hyaluronic acid is processed by your body, healthy collagen and elastin grow at a more significant rate.
So while the body naturally breaks them down over time, there is a way to speed up the process: Injections of hyaluronidase. Hyaluronidase is what the body produces naturally to break down fillers, so by injecting more, it allows the lips to regain natural shape quicker, usually going down within 3-4 days.
Answer: Fillers
Fillers work by pushing up the skin and adding volume to areas of deficit. If you massage them they will flatten out and will certainly loose their effect. Gentle rubbing in of face skin products should be fine though.
The swelling that can often occur after Lip Fillers can cause the lips to look a little uneven for a short time. This doesn't necessarily mean that anything has gone wrong and it may just take a little time for the product to fully settle and for residual swelling to subside.
Filler works by inflating a pocket or space under the skin. Once the filler is gone (whether absorbed back into the body or chemically dissolved), that space will become empty leaving the tissues in a more stretched out position (think of sucking out the beans from a bean bag leaving it with an excess, sagging bag.
DON'T touch the treated area for at least 6-8 hours afterwards. The risk of infection is much higher in the time immediately after your filler treatment, so medical experts recommend not touching the affected area for at least that amount of time.
Leave it alone – let it be and let it settle. Most dermal fillers are placed in the dermis and occasionally one might see the filler protrude out when injecting. This is not very common and squeezing HA filler to see what might happen to your pores is all bizarre.
Patients often ask before or after their injections, “Will cheek filler soften?” The answer is almost always yes. Upon injection, dermal fillers may feel firmer or harden due to a healing response of the body. Additionally, the filler needs to settle into the correct and ideal position.
When you have had too much filler, then you may appear to have a bulging forehead, an overly pointy and sharp chin, and overly protruding cheekbones. Furthermore, the filler can stretch and weigh down your skin over time, which is known as filler fatigue.
Whether you received too much filler, the filler appears lumpy and does not improve with massage, or your results simply don't look right, we may be able to use the enzyme hyaluronidase to dissolve the filler if you received dermal filler injections with a hyaluronic acid-based product, such as Juvéderm® and Restylane® ...
The good news is, yes, you can reverse many types of dermal filler! Most dermal filler injections are made from a substance called Hyaluronic Acid (HA), and there is an enzyme called Hyaluronidase, that dissolves HA. This is a prescribed medication that has to be administered by a medical professional only.
When the cause is congealed hyaluronic acid (which usually occurs if you used fillers from the Juvederm and Restylane families), it can be easily corrected by injecting hyaluronidase right into the lump. Hyaluronidase, like hyaluronic acid, occurs naturally in the body.
Are Lip Fillers Supposed to Feel Hard? Your lips may feel stiff or rigid immediately after injection with dermal fillers. Don't worry — this is entirely normal, and the lip fillers will soften with time.