Dermal Fillers: How Long Do They Last?

So today I’m going to try to answer a common question I get, which is, “How long do fillers last?” We often are told and quote this as 6-12 months, however more and more data is coming out suggesting that fillers last much, much longer than that – more like years and years.

Patients will come in having had undereye fillers 6 or 7 years ago, and they will say they feel they’re developing bags under their eyes, maybe that they’re getting old or looking tired, and on exam you can actually see evidence of their old filler in there causing this puffy appearance. The same is true for liquid rhinoplasty, or filler rhinoplasty, we are noticing that these fillers are lasting more on the order of years than months. And in the mouth area, I cannot count how many times I have heard patients say they were initially happy with their results but that the filler quickly went away after 1 or 2 months.

But when patients with lip fillers have been looked at with an MRI scan, what they can see is that the filler actually migrates upwards above the mouth and lip musculature. This makes sense, the mouth is a very active place and we move these muscles all day long, so naturally filler is going to have a very hard time staying perfectly in place. But a telltale sign of lip fillers is this migrated effect where the patient will develop a ramp of their white lip leading up to the vermillion border, up to the red part of the lip, that looks unnatural and duck-like. And many times the patient has gotten used to their appearance with the filler so they will feel after 6 months it’s time for more filler.