Botox – What to Expect Following Treatment

Hello my name's Adrian Richards and I'm a Plastic and Cosmetic Surgeon and I'm the Medical Director of Aurora Clinics and today I'm going to be talking as part of the Botox series of what to expect following treatment.


So Botox treatment is relatively safe and as I've mentioned in other procedures it does cause some discomfort but it's not normally too bad. Now, following treatment what we like you to do is we like you to take it a little bit easy, we don't like you to drink alcohol or exercise for three to four hours following surgery and this is really because any exercise or alcohol can increase blood flow to the skin and could potentially increase diffusion of the Botox away from where we want it to sit. So that's for four hours, and we also like you to try and use the muscles slightly more than usual following the treatment, so not excessively so you frighten children or anything, but just gentle frowning, raising your eyebrows and smiling, and that helps bind the Botox in its rightful position where we want it to be. So we ask you to do that sort of every ten minutes for an hour following surgery.


So, minimal discomfort, there may be slight swelling but normally that's very subtle. You may get a bruise. Some patients get a bruise and that's just unfortunately if we hit one of the very small blood vessels during treatment, you will get a little bruise which is normally the size of a match head and a very small bruise which can be hidden with makeup and normally takes about a week to go. We can give you special cream, the one we tend to use is Oraderm or Arnica which help resolve the bruise slightly quicker, but if you do get a bruise it's important that you know it will be there for about a week. So, will people know that you've had Botox treatment? Well normally within an hour or so once the tiny little marks have settled, covered with makeup, no they wouldn't really know you've had a Botox treatment. You might initially with your first time of treatment get a slight odd sensation in your forehead in the muscles treated in the next few days following treatment which basically feels like something's happening, it's not uncomfortable, it's not particularly swollen, it just feels like you're aware something's happening in the area. Interestingly that doesn't happen normally on the subsequent treatments, only really on the first one. And then over the first three or four days following treatment you will just notice a slow decrease in your ability to frown and raise your forehead. So when you go to frown you will be able to frown a little bit, but it just wont be quite as strong as it was. So normally by a week definitely notice activity. By two weeks the Botox will have taken it's full affect and by that time our aim is that you look completely natural, your frown is softened so you can frown a little bit but it's much softer. You can raise your eyebrows absolutely as normal. You may have actually got some raise in the eyebrows to make the eyebrows look a slightly nicer position, but you will be able to raise your eyebrows but you hopefully should have a slight decrease in the transverse folds across the forehead if you had them before. And then if you've elected to have the crows feet area treated when you sort of smile just the smile lines will be softened. We don't want them to go completely, we just want them softened. So you should have a subtle improved appearance, look slightly as if you've had a sleep, if you've been on holiday, you will look sort of slightly fresher and healthier. You still look like you, we want you to still look like you, we don't want you looking odd. Our aim is to make you look healthier and fresher, but without creating anything too major or creating a paralysed look.


So I hope that's clarified some of the topics following Botox treatment. If you'd like any more information about Botox treatment or any of the other treatments offered by Aurora Clinics, or would just like to come and have a chat to us about the best way forward for you, please don't hesitate to contact us either via our email via the website or by phoning us on 01844 214 362.
Thank you very much.


About the author: Adrian Richards is the Surgical Plastic and Cosmetic Surgeon at Aurora Skin Clinics. For more information on Skin Peels, Botox Clinic he recommends you to visit www.aurora-skin-clinics.co.uk