The hottest trend in plastic surgery is not for the squeamish. It's a so-called "lip job" that takes a muscle from the neck and grafts it into the lips for a perfect pout plump.

The BBC News reports it's been done with good results by doctors at the Aesthetic Surgery Center in Naples, Florida. The surgery is typically done at the same time as a facelift and makes the lips appear fuller and less puckered.

Women, who view lips as a sex symbol where bigger is better, have long augmented their lips. Even in ancient times, women used plant dyes and colored clays to enhance their lips. In the 1980s, collagen injections were used to plump up thin lips. While the neck muscle graft technique, developed by Dr. Anurag Agarwal and his colleagues, isn't permanent, it does last for at least two years.

The plastic surgeons, who use segments of the sternocleidomastoid muscle that runs along the side of the neck and the connective tissue that overlies it, insist the surgery is simple and the recovery straightforward with few complications. Once the swelling goes down after several weeks, the lips are full and have a natural feel since there is no artificial filler or implant.

Just beware of the following:

• Further augmentations may be required.

• If the patient isn't having a facelift at the same time, it is likely there will be a scar behind the hairline from the surgery.

• As with any plastic surgery, things can go wrong, although this is rare in this procedure.

• No single procedure is perfect or will reverse all signs of aging.

Their findings are published in Archives of Facial Plastic Surgery.

--From the Editors at Netscape