Dr. Tina Alster: Hi, I'm Dr. Tina Alster with the Washington Institute of Dermatologic Laser Surgery. Today I'm going to talk to you about dermal fillers.

We all can blame gravity for the development of our aging skin but it's really the loss of volume under the skin's surface that relates to the appearance of sagging and wrinkles.

We use dermal fillers in the doctor's office to improve scars by filling them in by restoring facial volume which would improve the sagging of the skin to fill in fine lines wrinkles and to give an overall more youthful contour to the skin's surface.

There are many advantages to using dermal fillers. Among these advantages is the fact that it's relatively inexpensive. It is clearly affective and the fact that you can do this with immediate results in a quick in and out procedure in the office. There's virtually no recovery and certainly it is not as involved as routine plastic surgery.

I often prescribe dermal fillers for filling in the lines from the nose to the mouth or what we term nasolabial folds; I also use it for around the mouth to improve the lip contour or to give a more pouty look to the lips and also to improve the facial volume. Oftentimes people get a little bit of sagging in the lower part of the face and we can fill that up and make it look more youthful.

The types of dermal fillers that are often used contain Hyaluronic Acid or HA for short. Hyaluronic acid is a normal constituent of our skin and it often would decline in the volume as we age. So it's important to replace the HA in our skin by these injections.

If you're showing signs of aging such as hollowing out of your cheeks and eye area or some sagging along the lower portion of your face, you may want to consider the use of these dermal fillers to restore your youthful skin contour.

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