Video Website powered by Einstein IndustriesMinas Constantinides, MD, FACS, PC

DR. MINAS CONSTANTINIDES: After you've tried Juvederm, Restylane, and you like the effect, there’s certain areas that are just to use a longer term filler in. In other words, I don’t usually recommend this at our first visit.

But if you've had those shorter acting fillers, you liked the effect but would like to see a longer lasting result, then you might be a candidate for something along the lines of Sculptra or ArteFILL.

Now those two fillers actually are for two quite different things. Sculptra can also be used for general volume filling in the mid face, in the cheek area, around the eyes, areas where we might use fat as an operation to transfer into that area.

Well sometimes patients don’t want surgery, but rather, just want a filler. And Sculptra can be used effectively as an alternative to fat transfer.

Sculptra consists of little particles that the body forms its own collagen around. So it’s not a volume filler in a traditional sense. You don’t get filling right away. You have to wait six to eight weeks after the injection for your own body to form it’s own collagen around these little particles.

These particles gradually dissolve over about three years. And in that time, you get long lasting filling in the areas that we inject. ArteFILL is another type of filler. It also relies on the body to form collagen around these particles.

But these particles are permanent. They don’t go away. And so we limit the use of ArteFILL to just the areas between the nose and corner of the mouth, nasal labial folds. These are the areas that the FDA has approved ArteFILL for.

And until we have a little bit more information and a little bit more experience with it, we will limit our use of ArteFILL just to those areas in my practice, just for you to be as safe as possible.