The term “filler” refers to those substances which, introduced through a needle in the skin or immediately below it, have the purpose of “filling” the tissues. Fillers are widely used by aesthetic doctors to correct wrinkles, furrows or depressions of the face or simply to increase the volume of some anatomical areas such as lips or cheekbones.
There are many active ingredients that comprise it and can be differentiated into two large families: resorbable substances and permanent substances.
The resorbable fillers are the most widespread biomaterials as they are characterised by a greater ease of use, a greater naturalness and fewer complications. The parent substances of this family are hyaluronic acid and collagen. The treatment is performed once or twice a year and results in practically no contraindications with minimal exposure to complications, although these are easily resolvable.
Hyaluronic acid is a fundamental structural element in many human tissues. In the skin, thanks to its three-dimensional arrangement, it constitutes the essential structure that determines its hydration, plasticity and turgor.
Permanent fillers, as the name suggests, once injected into the body, are, at least in theory, perennial. This assumption brings advantages and disadvantages. The advantages are linked to the fact that the patient undergoes the implantation of the substance only once. The disadvantages are related to the inevitable risks that the introduction of these materials entails; the organism recognises them as strangers and tries to eliminate them by triggering a continuous inflammatory reaction in the implant site.
Sometimes the use of fillers is not only indicated in facial “beautification” therapies, in fact, even reconstructive surgery has made use of these products to fill tissue deficits caused by loss of substance deriving from trauma or congenital malformations.