A growing number of women are spending thousands of dollars to correct what has become known as “Ozempic temples,” including Melissa Rivers, the daughter of late comedian Joan Rivers.
Rivers, 58, recently told the New York Post that she lost 25 pounds over six months while taking Mounjaro. Afterward, she noticed a condition called “temporal hollowing,” which causes the temples to appear sunken or concave and can occur after rapid weight loss.
“I always had a close eye on my temples, even before the weight loss, because I’m narrow in that area naturally … but it just became a bigger issue afterwards,” she said.
To restore volume, Rivers said she underwent NuvaSculpt injections, an FDA-approved filler designed to stimulate collagen production, along with Xerf, a radiofrequency treatment intended to tighten the skin.
“It made a world of difference,” she said, adding that the outcome was not overly “dramatic.”
Medical specialists say cosmetic treatments for temple hollowing are becoming increasingly common among people who have experienced substantial weight loss.
Board-certified facial plastic surgeon Dr Lesley Rabach told the Daily Mail: “Yes, absolutely there’s been a significant uptick in both temple filler as well as temple fat transfer in patients who’ve had significant weight loss from GLP-1s.”
“The temporal area houses a fat pad and when patients lose a significant amount of body weight it tends to thin out, thereby creating a hollowness,” she explained.
Melissa Rivers recently revealed that she had temple filler. The treatment is becoming increasingly popular among women seeking to correct “Ozempic temples” after weight loss. Rivers is pictured in September
“This causes the lateral brow to drop and give a more skeleton look, which ages the facial features. Fillers can be used to recontour the temple.”
Some patients, she added, choose a more extensive option: a fat transfer to the temples.
“It nourishes the area with fat stem cells from the patient and is permanent [compared to filler, which dissolves],” she said.
“Our practice has transitioned to doing more fat transfer than filler because of the permanence of it.
“This procedure is being done in our office several times a week and can be either part of a facelift procedure or as a standalone in a younger population performed under local anesthesia.”
Both fillers and fat transfers aim to replace lost volume in the hollow areas around the temples.
“It creates a soft appearance and reduces the shadow of the concavity, thereby creating a much more youthful appearance,” she explained.
The procedures can be costly. Rabach said temple filler designed to last roughly a year typically ranges from $5,000 to $7,000, while fat-transfer procedures can cost between $15,000 and $18,000.
Board-certified facial plastic surgeon Dr Lesley Rabach told the Daily Mail: “Yes, absolutely there’s been a significant uptick in both temple filler as well as temple fat transfer in patients who’ve had significant weight loss from GLP-1s” (stock image)
Double board-certified dermatologist Dr Jody Levine said she has performed temple-filler treatments for “many years,” but noted that she is “definitely seeing more temples that need to be filled” as GLP-1 medications have become more widely used.
“When people lose weight quickly on GLP-1 drugs like Ozempic or Wegovy, they lose fat from the face as well as the body,” said Levine, director of dermatology at New York City-based Plastic Surgery & Dermatology.
“The temples are one of the first places it shows because the fat pad that keeps them full is thin to begin with.
“Some of the muscle under the temple can also shrink with rapid weight loss as can the bone. The result is a sunken, hollow look that can make people appear older than they are.”
Temple filler, she said, can “replace that lost volume right away.”
“The temple has a lot of blood vessels, so this is a procedure that should only be done by an experienced injector,” she cautioned.