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 the 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 what doctors call temporal hollowing—a sunken appearance around the temples that can follow 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 and tighten the skin, Rivers said she underwent NuvaSculpt injections, an FDA-approved filler designed to stimulate collagen production, along with Xerf, a radiofrequency skin-tightening treatment.
“It made a world of difference,” she said, adding that the results were not overly “dramatic.”
Experts say cosmetic procedures targeting hollowed temples have become increasingly common among people who lose substantial weight while taking GLP-1 medications.
Board-certified facial plastic surgeon Dr Lesley Rabach told Our News Outlet: “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 filler injected into her temple area. The cosmetic treatment, which can cost thousands of dollars, is increasingly being used to address “Ozempic temples.” 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.”
Rabach added that some patients choose a more extensive option: transferring fat into the temples.
“It nourishes the area with fat stem cells from the patient and is permanent [compared to filler, which dissolves],” she said.
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“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 are intended to restore lost volume and soften the hollowed contours of the temples, she said.
“It creates a soft appearance and reduces the shadow of the concavity, thereby creating a much more youthful appearance,” she explained.
The treatments, however, come with a substantial price tag. Temple filler that lasts roughly a year can cost between $5,000 and $7,000, while fat-transfer procedures typically range from $15,000 to $18,000.
Board-certified facial plastic surgeon Dr Lesley Rabach told Our News Outlet: “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-filling procedures for “many years,” but has noticed “definitely more temples that need to be filled” as GLP-1 use has risen.
“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 the New York City-based clinic 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.”
Levine said temple filler 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.
