Restylane Lyft: Four Approved Areas, Three Trials, and the Cleanest Study in Filler Research
Reviewed for medical accuracy against our Medical Review Board · Last updated 2 September 2026
Part of Dermal Fillers
Restylane Lyft is the most widely approved product in the Restylane range. The FDA has cleared it for four different areas across three separate clinical trials: facial folds, cheeks and midface in 2015, the back of the hands in 2018, and the chin in November 2025.
Those three trials were designed three different ways, and one of them is the cleanest piece of filler research we have read. It is also the one nobody talks about, because it is about hands.
The trial worth knowing about. For the hand approval, Galderma ran a split-hand study: one of your hands treated, your other hand left untreated as the control. Same person, same day, same skin. At Week 12 the treated hands scored 85.9% responders against 21.2% for the untreated fellow hands. No other filler trial removes personal variation that cleanly.
Four approved areas, three trials
| Area | FDA approval | Approved | Approved wording |
|---|---|---|---|
| Facial folds, cheeks and midface | P040024/S073 | 1 July 2015 | Deep dermis to superficial subcutis for moderate to severe facial folds and wrinkles such as nasolabial folds, and subcutaneous to supraperiosteal for cheek augmentation and correction of age-related midface contour deficiencies, over 21 |
| Back of the hands | P040024/S099 | 18 May 2018 | Subcutaneous implantation in the dorsal hand to correct volume deficit, over 21 |
| Chin | P040024/S142 | 4 November 2025 | Subcutaneous and/or supraperiosteal for augmentation of the chin region to improve chin profile in patients with mild to moderate chin retrusion, over 21 |
The version carrying all of these is Restylane Lyft with Lidocaine. Lidocaine is a local anaesthetic mixed into the gel for comfort. It does not change the result.
Note that the chin wording, like the Restylane Defyne chin approval, is limited to mild to moderate retrusion. If yours is severe, neither product's approval covers you. We set that out in full on chin filler.
One practical note on names: Lyft is the product formerly sold as Perlane. FDA filings list both names together from 2015 and Perlane still appears in filings as late as 2021, so if a clinic quotes you "Perlane", ask which current product they mean rather than assuming. More on the range and how the names work on our Restylane hub.
The split-hand study, and why the design matters
Every trial has the same problem: people differ. Two patients age differently, photograph differently, heal differently. So when a trial compares treated people against untreated people, some of the difference it measures is just the people.
The hand study solved that by making each patient their own control. It was a randomised, evaluator-blinded, paired split-hand study: one hand was randomised to treatment, and the other hand received nothing. The blinded evaluator then scored both using the Merz Hand Grading Scale, where a responder is a hand improving by at least one point.
At Week 12:
| Responders at Week 12 | |
|---|---|
| Treated hand | 85.9% |
| Untreated fellow hand | 21.2% |
| Difference | 64.7 percentage points |
That 64.7 point gap is a genuinely clean measurement, because both numbers came from the same person on the same day. The trial also checked whether it mattered which hand: results for the dominant and non-dominant hand differed negligibly, as did results by age, skin type, gender, ethnicity and injected volume.
The uncomfortable half of the same finding: 21.2% of hands that received nothing at all were still scored as improved by a blinded evaluator. That is the noise floor of the measurement, and it is why a raw success percentage on its own tells you very little.
Cheeks and midface
The 2015 approval rested on a randomised, multi-centre, evaluator-blinded study of 200 subjects at 12 US centres, randomised 3 to 1 against no treatment. The primary question was explicit: is Lyft more effective than doing nothing for midface contour deficiency, judged by a blinded evaluator at 2 months, using the Medicis Midface Volume Scale.
| Responders | |
|---|---|
| Restylane Lyft | 88.7% (133/150) |
| No treatment | 16.7% (8/50) |
This is a much more useful result than a non-inferiority study, because it answers the question patients actually have. 88.7% against 16.7% is a 72 point difference against an untreated group, on a scale where "nothing was done" was recorded as improvement about one time in six.
The trial deliberately enrolled a range of skin types: 61 of the 200 subjects had Fitzpatrick skin types IV to VI, and 21 had types V or VI. That is better representation than most filler trials manage, and it is worth knowing if you have been told the evidence does not cover darker skin. For how this sits against the other approved cheek products, see cheek filler.
The chin approval nobody has covered yet
Lyft gained its chin indication on 4 November 2025, which is recent enough that almost nothing written for patients mentions it. The study was randomised, evaluator-blinded, parallel group and comparator-controlled, with subjects randomised 2 to 1 against another product rather than against no treatment.
Responder rates on the Galderma Chin Retrusion Scale, as judged by the blinded evaluator:
| Timepoint | Responders |
|---|---|
| Month 3 | 83.6% |
| Month 6 | 75.5% |
| Month 9 | 69.1% |
| Month 12 | 69.7% |
Roughly seven in ten still had a measurable result at a year, and the curve is notably flat between months 9 and 12. But note what this design cannot tell you: because the comparison was against another product rather than against nothing, this trial produced no untreated control rate. Set against the 16.7% and 21.2% above, that absence matters. The document also states the study was not designed to evaluate the safety of repeat use.
What the three control groups reveal
Put the three Lyft trials side by side with the jawline filler trials and something useful appears.
| Trial | Scale | Untreated group scored as improved |
|---|---|---|
| Lyft, cheeks and midface | Medicis Midface Volume Scale | 16.7% |
| Lyft, hands | Merz Hand Grading Scale | 21.2% |
| Radiesse, jawline | Merz Jawline Assessment Scale | 8.8% |
| Juvederm Volux, jawline | Allergan Loss of Jawline Definition Scale | 39.1% |
| Lyft, chin | Galderma Chin Retrusion Scale | never measured |
Five trials, five scales, and the rate at which doing nothing got recorded as improvement ranges from 8.8% to 39.1%. That is not biology, it is measurement. A generous scale inflates both arms, and a product tested on a generous scale will show a higher headline number without being any better.
The practical rule: a filler success rate is only meaningful next to its own control rate. If a page quotes you a percentage without one, it is quoting a number that cannot be compared with anything. We make the same point with different products on jawline filler and chin filler.
Who was actually studied
The cheek trial enrolled 92% women, aged 18 to 65, all seeking midface augmentation with measurable volume loss at baseline. The hand trial enrolled women only, aged 22 and over, with a mean age of 55.7.
So the hand evidence, in particular, describes an older, entirely female population. Hand treatment on a man is legal and not unusual, but it was not studied here. The same gap runs through almost every filler approval we have read, and it is a limitation of the evidence base rather than of this product.
The cheek trial is the exception worth crediting on skin type: 61 of 200 subjects at Fitzpatrick IV to VI is meaningfully better than the filler norm.
What to ask before you book
- Which area, and is it one of the three that were studied? Facial folds and midface, dorsal hands, and chin for mild to moderate retrusion. Anything else is off-label.
- Is my chin retrusion mild, moderate or severe? The approval stops at moderate.
- For hands, how many millilitres? The trial analysed results by injected volume and found little difference, so more is not automatically better.
- What was it compared against? The cheek and hand results came from untreated controls. The chin result came from a comparison against another product, so it says nothing about how much of the change was the filler.
- What happens at nine to twelve months? The chin curve sat near 69% at both.
- Can it be dissolved? Yes, it is hyaluronic acid, so hyaluronidase works on it.
For the rest of the range see our Restylane hub, for lips see Restylane Kysse, and filler recovery covers what the first two weeks involve. Filler complications covers what is not normal recovery.
Frequently asked questions
What is Restylane Lyft approved for?
Does Restylane Lyft work on hands?
How long does Restylane Lyft last in the chin?
Is Restylane Lyft the same as Perlane?
How well does Restylane Lyft work on cheeks?
Has Restylane Lyft been tested on darker skin?
Why can Restylane Lyft results not be compared with other fillers?
Sources
Every figure on this page was read from the documents below rather than from a clinic or a manufacturer's marketing. They open in a new tab so you can check any claim here against its source.
- Summary of Safety and Effectiveness Data, P040024/S073, Restylane Lyft cheeks and midface, US Food and Drug Administration
- Summary of Safety and Effectiveness Data, P040024/S099, Restylane Lyft dorsal hand, US Food and Drug Administration
- Summary of Safety and Effectiveness Data, P040024/S142, Restylane Lyft chin, US Food and Drug Administration
- Dermal fillers (soft tissue fillers), US Food and Drug Administration
Know the count before the quote. The unit count is half the bill, and a low per-unit rate recovered by a high unit count is the commonest way a deal is not one. How to tell.
Deciding which area, not how many units? Botox by facial area covers what each zone actually achieves, which four are FDA approved, and the things Botox cannot fix at all.
