Effect of Nerve Ring Block Anesthesia on Lip Edema after Dermal Filler Injection

Abstract

Background and Aim: Due to the good intraoperative environment and its advantages such as rapid recovery, fewer side effects, long-term analgesia into the postoperative period, earlier discharge and reduced costs, regional nerve ring block is an alternative to other anesthetic techniques for procedures to be applied in the lips. In this study, we aimed to determine the effects of nerve ring block anesthesia on lip edema after  dermal filler injection.

Materials and Methods: From January 2017 to June 2018, 72 patients who were presented to a plastic surgery clinic desiring filler treatment for lip augmentation were enrolled. Subjects were divided as group A in patients who underwent regional nerve ring block anesthesia and topical anesthetic procedure before the procedure, and group B in patients who underwent only topical anesthetic procedure without regional nerve ring block anesthesia. The severity and duration of edema and the effect of lip augmentation procedure after the different local anesthetic applications were evaluated in both groups.

Results: We observed that the severity of edema was less and the transient edema was resolved in a shorter time in group A where regional nerve ring block anesthesia and topical anesthetic pro-cedure were performed as a pre-treatment. 

Conclusion: We believe that regional nerve ring block administration before the lip filler procedure may have an impact to reduce the edema occurred in the treatment area due to local anesthetic’s anti-inflammatory effects and neural therapy properties. However, further studies are needed in this respect.