Correcting previous treatment in Busan Seomyeon, and what can actually be fixed.

Patients arriving after treatment they regret often expect a difficult conversation and a complicated fix. Usually neither applies — hyaluronic acid dissolves, botox expires, and the main task is deciding what to rebuild rather than how to repair.

What dissolves

Any hyaluronic acid filler, within a day or two, using hyaluronidase. That covers the great majority of what patients want undone — overfilled midface, lips beyond their proportion, under-eye puffiness and the blue Tyndall cast from superficial placement. Reassessment happens a fortnight later once everything has settled, and rebuilding follows if wanted — see under-eye treatment options.

What wears off

Botulinum toxin, entirely, over three to four months. Nothing reverses it, so an over-treated forehead or an unwanted heaviness resolves with time rather than intervention. What can be done meanwhile is partial rebalancing — a few units into an opposing muscle sometimes lifts a heavy brow — see forehead lines and heavy brows.

What is difficult

Non-hyaluronic products. Collagen stimulators cannot be dissolved and an overbuilt result waits for turnover. Permanent fillers — not used here — present the hardest cases, sometimes years after placement, and may require surgical removal. Threads that have integrated cannot be simply withdrawn, though puckering and extrusion are manageable.

What is permanent

Scarring from an over-aggressive laser, tissue loss from a vascular event, and structural change from surgery. These are uncommon and they are the reason the safety pages on this site exist — see what can go wrong. Even here, improvement is usually possible; restoration to the previous state is not.

Why the sequence is dissolve, wait, reassess

Because a face carrying product that is being removed cannot be assessed accurately. Dissolving first and reviewing a fortnight later shows what is genuinely there rather than what is left over — and patients frequently find that considerably less rebuilding is needed than they expected, since the original problem was often overfilling rather than deficiency.

Why is overfilling the most common correction?

Because it is the failure mode that every incentive points toward. A patient asking for more is easy to satisfy, a full syringe is a cleaner sale than half of one, and the result looks impressive at two weeks before the face around it continues changing. Add that volume placed repeatedly over years accumulates in ways no single session reveals, and the picture patients describe as looking not like themselves arrives gradually rather than from one appointment. Almost none of it involves anything having gone wrong — see what a no-upsell policy means.

What happens after the correction?

A rebuild if you want one, planned from a clean baseline rather than layered onto what was there. That is frequently the useful part of the whole process — a face assessed without existing product often needs a different plan from the one it has been receiving, and several layers may turn out to matter more than the one being repeatedly treated — see why faces age. Some patients dissolve, reassess and decide they want nothing further, which is also a legitimate outcome.

What to bring

Whatever records exist — product name, volume or units, date, and the clinic. If you have none, say roughly what and roughly when; knowing there was filler in an area two years ago changes the plan even without a brand name. Photographs from before the original treatment are the most useful single item, since they show what you are trying to return to — see what to bring.

If you do not know what was used

It is workable and it limits precision rather than preventing treatment. Ultrasound can locate filler and indicate its distribution. Response to hyaluronidase confirms whether a product is hyaluronic acid. What cannot be recovered is the exact volume and depth, which is why treatment proceeds more cautiously than it would with full records.

Will you criticise the previous clinic?

No, and it is rarely useful. Most poor outcomes come from a technique or dose decision rather than negligence, and the same doctor produces good results on other faces. What matters is what is in front of us now and what you want changed — whether that turns out to involve lifting, skin quality work or nothing further at all. Where something was genuinely unsafe, we say so plainly — but that is a different conversation from a result you dislike.

How long does a correction take?

Dissolving takes minutes and settles over a day or two. Reassessment at a fortnight. Rebuilding, if wanted, at that appointment or later. For botox, three to four months of waiting with a review at the end. Most patients complete a full correction and rebuild within two months, which is faster than they expect walking in — see the two-week review. For visitors that timeline usually means two trips rather than one, and where only a single visit is possible the dissolving is done and the rebuild deferred rather than compressed into the same week.