One Week After Kybella™



My patients often ask me how they will look and feel after their Kybella injections. Patients who favor Kybella™ over surgical procedures such as liposuction are often partially motivated by the lack of surgical downtime. For this reason, it’s not surprising that they are concerned when they hear that patients can have prolonged swelling and numbness under their chins after Kybella™ treatment. Certainly, I have heard reports that patients can have prolonged and significant swelling in their necks (sometime lasting weeks and referred to as “bull frog neck”).

While I always inform patients that prolonged and significant swelling of their neck is possible, we have not experienced this kind of swelling to a very significant degree to date. I think there are several techniques I use around the time of Kybella™ treatments that might help reduce the swelling, and certainly seems to have been useful for my patients.

Firstly, I ask my patients to wear a light compression dressing for the first several days after the Kybella™ treatments. The patients do not need to wear this neck compression dressing all the time, but I encourage patients to wear the neck dressing for the first 3-4 days, especially when at home and at night.

I often have patients take a short course of steroid anti-inflammatory medical called a Medrol dose pack. This is a relatively low dose and short course of steroids that is frequently prescribed for a wide variety of aliments from sinusitis to a skin rash. I think it’s possible this Medrol dose pack has been helpful for my patients and has allowed them to maintain essentially normal activity throughout their treatment, with very minimal short term neck swelling or other cosmetic issues. While this might be the case, I also warn patients that using a Medrol dose pack has very rare but well documented complications.

Finally, I encourage my patients to stop all blood thinners, such as aspirin, ibuprofen, and fish oil about two weeks before treatment, so long as this is ok with their PCP. By avoiding blood thinners patients can reduce the risk of bruising and swelling as a result of the physical trauma of injecting the Kybella™, which gives patients a leg up on achieving a smooth recovery.

This video reports on how a patient looks and feels one week after her Kybella™ injections. To hear more about how the patient felt right after her injections please refer to the main Kybella™ page.

I hope this information is helpful as you decide whether to use Kybella™ to treat your submental double chin fat.