Orientals commonly have thick lips that lack shape. Considering peripheral structures such as upper lip protrusion or short chin, it is rare for orientals to have congenitally esthetic lips, and lip plastic surgeries should often be conducted to attain perfect results. The physician should consider the degree of lip remodeling after the accurate evaluation of the facial organ proportion individually to avoid complications such as enlarged tooth crevice or difficulty in closing the mouth, which may arise from excess lip flesh resection. Sexy lip surgery provided by Dr. Chuang comprises lip reduction, which resects the thick or disproportionate lip flesh and reduces the lip within the golden ratio to redress the extroverted lip, and lip sculpturing, which trims the flab at the upper and lower lip margins to create an M-shaped lip margin and lip bead. According to Dr. Chuang’s experience, an overwhelming majority of patients undergoing lip plastic surgery need to receive the aforementioned two procedures to attain a perfect result, and the reduction degree of lip flesh should be discussed and determined in light of individual conditions and requirements.

Generally, the part to be excised is first demarcated at the border of the outer lip (pale red crease) and inner lip (red mucosa), and then, the thick lip skin and subcutaneous tissues are directly resected; this is first-stage lip reduction. The labial muscles, nerves, and blood vessels should be preserved to prevent postoperative labial atrophy or paresthesia. The excision of proper skin is second-stage lip remodeling, which involves sculpting and stitching of the incision in line with the preoperative plan, and shaping of the lip bead to create a lip shape expected by patients. Despite the surgery seeming to be simple, conservative resection should be employed for patients with mouth protrusion or osseous snaggletooth to avoid side effects such as difficulty in closing the mouth or incisor tooth exposure induced by excessive lip reduction.

Patients with a thin lip do not need to undergo the surgery but can consider the simple injection of low molecular weight hyaluronic acid (Restylane) to plump up the lip shape or an injection to the lip margin and lip bead to sculpt Cupid’s curve on the projected lip, which rapidly improves the lip proportion and reinforces the sexy expression of the lips.