What happens after a lip lift?
Your aftercare plan decides
Your surgeon's aftercare plan decides what happens after your lip lift, so use that plan over any general description. A recovery timeline and a list of expected effects belong in that written plan.
Cut, closure and aftercare as causes
What happens after surgery is a chain of causes. Ask how the cut, the closure and the aftercare could each affect what you see later, starting with the scar. A hospital system's lip lift page covering types, surgery, recovery and scars is a useful place to see how those topics are grouped together.
If your jaw or bite is part of the concern, ask whether jaw surgery would change what the lip lift can do. A review of combining orthognathic surgery with lip lift for the area below the nose discusses how the two procedures fit together.
Aftercare questions before the day
- Ask for the written aftercare instructions before the day of surgery.
- Ask what you should do and avoid in the first days, and for how long.
- Ask where the scar will sit and how it will be checked over time.
- Ask whom to call, and how fast, if something looks wrong.
The scar at every follow-up visit
For lip lift, the practical lesson from reading follow-up data is to ask about the scar at each follow-up visit, not only at the start.