Botox – What to expect during treatment

Adrian Richards, Leading Plastic Surgeon for Aurora Clinics explains what you should expect during Botox Treatment. For more information or should you wish to book a FREE Consultation with our specialist plastic surgeon, please call us on 01844 214362.

Botox – What to Expect During Treatment

Hello. My name is Adrian Richards, and I’m a plastic surgeon and I’m the Medical Director of Aurora Clinics. So today I’m going to talk to you about Botox treatment and really what to expect following treatment and during treatment.

So what we normally do if we haven’t met you before, we like to meet you initially and have a consultation and discuss the areas of concern for you and really what you hoping to gain from treatment, because often people have misconceptions about Botox, what it’s going to do, what it’s good for. And it may be that Botox treatments isn’t suitable for you, and we’ll honestly go through that and discuss that with you. So if you haven’t had any treatments before, normally we like to look at your face, discuss what you’d like before we embark on any treatments. Usually, we wouldn’t do the Botox treatment on the first appointment, because we’d like to give you lots of information to really take home and consider.

So, when you do decide to have the Botox treatment, what we like you to do is come in. We’d like you to be a little bit rested and have perhaps not had a really big night out the night before. It’s important to notice that any non-steroidal drugs like aspirin, Nurofen, and also other medications such as St. John’s wort, vitamin E, and gingko can increase a slight tendency to bruise. So we’d like you to stop those for four to five days before the treatment. So you need to come in, and then the treatment will be performed. Sometimes we will give you some numbing cream on the areas just to sort of take away the slight pinprick sensation where the Botox is given. We need to leave that on for at least 15 minutes really to numb the skin.

If you have the EMLA, that’s the numbing cream on, you really don’t feel very much. It’s not really that uncomfortable. Most patients are a little bit nervous initially regarding treatment, but once they’ve had it, it’s not normally that uncomfortable. Actually, we use a special type of saline saltwater to make up the Botox, which is a neutral acid and alkali to the body. So actually the injection itself doesn’t hurt. It’s only the little needle going in the skin, and we use microneedles which we use for children and babies to reduce the pain of this.

So you’ll feel a number of little injections, normally about four or five to the glabella area, four or five to the frontalis area, which is the muscle that raises the forehead, and normally three or four to the crow’s feet area. Treatment normally takes three to four minutes. It’s very quick, and we normally like you lying or reclining slightly for that.

Afterwards you may have a bruise, probably about one in five or six patients get a slight bruise, and that’s because inadvertently, we’ve nicked one of the very small blood vessels. If we do give you a bruise, we’ll know immediately. We’ll explain to you immediately. It will only be very small normally, but you might need some makeup, initially some ice and some compression on the bruise to make it as small as possible and then just some makeup to cover it.

So treatment is normally pretty comfortable. It doesn’t really hurt that much. Normally, very well tolerated, relatively quick, and often patients are surprised at how quick and simple it is.

So I hope that’s been informative. If you would like any other questions regarding this treatment or any other treatments offered by Aurora, please don’t hesitate to contact us either via website, with an email, or by phoning us on 01844 214362. Thank you.