Resources on Aesthetics Academy

Tear trough assessment: the three causes of the hollow

Sat, 18 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000

This address is preserved from the original site; the page covers the topic rather than any individual.

A hollow beneath the eye is a description of an appearance, not a diagnosis. At least three different anatomical situations produce something that looks similar in a static photograph, and they call for entirely different responses. The assessment, not the technique, decides the outcome.

Cause one: ligamentous tethering

The tear trough proper corresponds to an osteocutaneous attachment running from the maxilla to the dermis along the inferomedial orbital rim. Where tissue is bound down, it cannot descend with the tissue around it, and a groove appears at the boundary.

Skin lesions in aesthetic assessment and when to refer

Tue, 31 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Aesthetic practice involves looking closely at facial skin, in good light, repeatedly, over years. That is an unusual degree of access, and it means practitioners encounter lesions that the patient has not noticed and has not mentioned to anyone else.

This page does not set out diagnostic criteria, and it is not a guide to identifying skin cancer. Its subject is narrower and more useful: the obligation to recognise the boundary of one’s own scope, and to route anything that falls outside it to someone qualified to assess it.

Filler rheology reference: what the measurements mean

Mon, 16 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000

These notes concern the measurements themselves — what each parameter is derived from, and how much confidence a published number deserves. The clinical translation is covered separately; the point here is that a figure quoted on a product sheet is the output of a test method, and the method conditions how the figure should be read.

Storage modulus

G′ is the storage modulus, obtained by oscillatory rheometry: the gel is subjected to oscillating shear and the response is separated into an elastic component stored by the material (G′) and a viscous component dissipated as flow (G″). G′ is the portion that describes how far the gel resists being deformed and returns to shape afterwards.

Hyaluronidase protocol: dilution and administration

Thu, 26 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000

This is a reading note on how hyaluronidase is described in the published literature. It is not a protocol to follow, and nothing here substitutes for the guidelines themselves, for training, or for a clinician’s own judgement in an emergency.

The variable that matters

Hyaluronidase acts on hyaluronic acid by hydrolysis, at the site of contact. It does not circulate to find the material. Every feature of the published emergency protocols follows from that single fact: the enzyme must physically reach the gel, at sufficient concentration, for long enough to degrade it.

Injection anatomy review across the face

Tue, 17 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Facial anatomy is normally learned region by region. This note runs the other way, pulling the common structure out of the regional detail, because the principles that prevent complications are the same everywhere and only the named structures change.

Layers

The face is arranged in five layers: skin; subcutaneous fat; the musculo-aponeurotic layer (SMAS, continuous with galea above and platysma below); a plane of loose areolar tissue and retaining ligaments; and the deep fascia and periosteum. The arrangement holds across the face, but the layers are not of equal thickness everywhere, and in some regions one of them is effectively absent — the eyelid has almost no subcutaneous layer at all.

Advertising compliance for aesthetic practice in the UK

Wed, 11 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Most marketing guidance written for aesthetic practice treats compliance as a footnote. In the United Kingdom it is the governing constraint, and it applies before any question of channel, audience or copy. The single fact that determines everything else is that botulinum toxin is a prescription-only medicine.

The two instruments

CAP Code rule 12.12 provides that prescription-only medicines, and treatments involving them, may not be advertised to the public. It applies to marketing communications in every medium the Code covers and is enforced by the Advertising Standards Authority.

Complications of botulinum toxin and dermal fillers

Sun, 08 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Complication lists are usually organised by product. That arrangement is convenient for learning and unhelpful in the room, because the first decision after an injectable complication is not which product caused it but how quickly it must be acted on.

The triage split

Every injectable complication falls on one side of a single line: vascular or non-vascular. Vascular events — arterial occlusion, embolic visual loss, and the tissue ischaemia that follows — are time-critical, and published management guidelines are built around minimising delay. Everything else, including infection, nodules, asymmetry, migration and unsatisfactory aesthetic outcome, matters but is not measured in minutes.

Biostimulation versus volumising: reference notes

Thu, 05 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Injectables are frequently grouped together as “fillers”, which obscures a division that matters more than any brand distinction: whether the product supplies the volume itself, or whether it provokes the tissue into producing volume.

Two different propositions

A volumising hyaluronic acid gel occupies space. Its behaviour is described by measurable physical properties — elastic modulus, viscosity, cohesivity, water binding — and the result is visible at the end of the appointment. Because the material is the result, the result is adjustable during treatment and reversible afterwards.

Anatomy of the temple and its danger zones

Mon, 02 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000

The temple is often described as a straightforward region because the endpoint — restoring a hollow — looks simple. The anatomy underneath is not simple, and it is one of the few areas of the face where two different categories of serious complication have both been reported.

The layered arrangement

From surface to bone the temple is conventionally described in five layers: skin; subcutaneous fat; the superficial temporal fascia (also called the temporoparietal fascia, continuous with the SMAS below and with galea above); a loose areolar plane; and the deep temporal fascia, which splits over the upper part of the zygomatic arch into superficial and deep layers enclosing the superficial temporal fat pad. Beneath that lie temporalis muscle and periosteum.