Why We Don’t Use Bellafill at Our Vancouver Clinic

Written and medically reviewed by Parveen Sangha, NP. Updated 11 September 2026.

FILLER CHOICES

What Bellafill Is

Bellafill is an injectable filler made of tiny, smooth beads of polymethylmethacrylate, a synthetic material usually shortened to PMMA, suspended in a gel of purified bovine collagen with a local anaesthetic. The collagen gel gives immediate volume and is absorbed by the body over the following months. The beads are not absorbed. They stay in the skin, and your own collagen forms around them, which is where the long lasting result comes from.

It is approved for use in Canada and the United States, mainly for smile lines, the folds that run from the nose to the corners of the mouth. In the United States it is also approved for certain acne scars on the cheeks. Because it contains bovine collagen, a skin test is done about four weeks before treatment to check for a reaction.

Why We Do Not Offer It

The short answer is permanence. Hyaluronidase breaks down hyaluronic acid filler, which is why a hyaluronic acid result can be adjusted or undone with filler dissolving. It does nothing to PMMA. Once the beads are in place, the only way to take them out is surgery.

Every face keeps changing. Bone, fat and skin all shift with age, so a result placed perfectly at forty sits differently at fifty five. A reversible filler can follow that change. A permanent implant stays where it was put while the face around it moves.

It also runs against how we practise. We start conservatively and build from there, because a result that is slightly under can always be added to, and a result that is overdone should always have a way back. Bellafill removes the way back.

None of this means Bellafill is unsafe, or that clinics offering it are wrong. It is an approved product with published clinical data behind it. It is simply a trade we are not willing to make on someone else’s face.

What We Use Instead

For smile lines and lost volume, we use hyaluronic acid filler, placed conservatively, with room to add rather than to take away. If anything is not right, it can be adjusted or dissolved. Our page on dermal fillers in Vancouver explains how we plan it.

When someone wants a longer lasting, collagen building result, Radiesse and Sculptra are the options we discuss. Neither can be dissolved either, and we explain that before anyone agrees to them, but both are broken down by the body over time rather than staying for good. Radiesse typically lasts twelve to eighteen months. Sculptra builds gradually and can keep improving for up to two years.

For acne scarring, the other use Bellafill is known for, we work on the skin itself with microneedling, Morpheus8 or chemical peels, depending on the scar type and your skin. If you are weighing up how long different fillers stay, our guide on how long dermal fillers last goes area by area.

If You Already Have Bellafill

Tell us at your consultation if you have ever had Bellafill or any other permanent filler, where it was placed and roughly when. It changes what we can safely place nearby, and it is one of the few things in your history that dissolving cannot undo.

If you are not sure what was used, say that too. It is better to plan around an unknown than to guess.