A Common Scan Can Prevent Face Damage From Cosmetic Fillers

Key TakeawaysUltrasound may help avoid serious complications from cosmetic fillersThe scans could help doctors dissolve improperly placed fillers that are blocking blood flowThey also may help place the fillers more precisely, warding off complications.WEDNESDAY, Dec. 3, 2025 (HealthDay News) — Cosmetic fillers are meant to enhance a person’s beauty, but can cause damage and deformity if applied incorrectly.However, ultrasound scans can help doctors prevent these ugly side effects by precisely guiding treatment to dissolve poorly placed fillers that are blocking blood vessels, according to findings presented Wednesday at the Radiological Society of North America’s annual meeting.Such use of ultrasound can improve treatment of vascular occlusion — disruption of blood flow — caused by misplaced fillers, researchers said.“Vascular occlusion events in the face can be devastating, because, if they’re not properly treated, they can cause necrosis and even facial deformation,” researcher Dr. Rosa Maria Silveira Sigrist, an attending radiologist at the University of São Paulo in Brazil, said in a news release.Cosmetic fillers are injected to improve facial appearance by adding volume, smoothing wrinkles and enhancing contours, researchers said in background notes.The most common cosmetic filler, hyaluronic acid, was used in more than 5.3 million treatments in the United States in 2024, researchers said.To track the risks of these fillers, researchers studied blood vessel complications among 100 patients treated at four radiology centers, one dermatology center and one plastic surgery center between May 2022 and April 2025.The most common complication involved fillers interfering with blood flow between superficial and deep arteries in the face, affecting about 42% of cases.Another 35% of cases involved completely blocked blood flow in major blood vessels, often associated with arteries leading to the nose.Areas around the nose are particularly risky injection sites, because the arteries there connect to blood vessels feeding the face as well as major organs, Sigrist said. Severe complications caused by damage to those vessels can include blindness and stroke.Doctors treat filler-blocked blood vessels with hyaluronidase, an enzyme that breaks down hyaluronic acid.“If injectors are not guided by ultrasound, they treat based on where the clinical findings are and inject blindly,” Sigrist said.“But if we can see the ultrasound finding, we can target the exact place where the occlusion occurs,” Sigrist continued. “Rather than flooding the area with hyaluronidase, we can do guided injections that use less hyaluronidase and provide better treatment results.”Ultrasound also can prevent the problem in the first place, helping doctors precisely place fillers so they won’t cause blood vessel blockages, Sigrist added. On top of that, less filler is needed when ultrasound is used to help guide the injections, Sigrist noted.However, researchers said better mapping of the facial blood vessels is needed to help map out common patterns of filler-related complications.Findings presented at medical meetings should be considered preliminary until published in a peer-reviewed journal.More informationThe American Society of Plastic Surgeons has more on dermal fillers.SOURCE: Radiological Society of North America, news release, Dec. 3, 2025.What This Means For YouPeople seeking cosmetic fillers should ask their doctor about using ultrasound to place them properly..Sign up for our weekly HealthDay newsletter