Skull Reshaping

Q: Dr. Eppley, I am interested in skull reshaping surgery. But I am very discouraged from moving forward with what we have discussed so far because when I look in the mirror and I see the flaws I have and how it bothers me and why it bothers me, it leads me to believe that I would feel the same way with these proposed minor changes we discussed previously. I wholeheartedly believe for me to be actually satisfied with an end result I would have to move forward with the FULL correction of skull irregularities which I am aware will result in a scar over my head from ear to ear. I am one of those individuals with an OCD personality so I know for sure that i should either go all the way or not at all because in the end it wouldn’t truly make me happy looking in the mirror and still seeing asymmetrical skull features. My whole purpose of coming to you is because I am extremely self aware of my asymmetry in my skull, the bulge on the one side of my head drives me insane and you have already made it clear you cannot work on that unless you open up my skull side to side so that is why I am leaning toward going all the way and reshaping the whole skull. I have attached a picture of a professional athlete who has what appears to be a coronal scalp scar.

A: You are indeed looking at a rare near total coronal incision on a shaved head. I do not know why that person had that operation but that scar from your perspective is helpful. That scar location on the scalp is not exactly were such an incision would be placed on you. It would be placed further back and and would to be in a completely straight line from side to side. It would be more curved but would probably go no lower in the temples than what is shown in his pictures. I would consider his scar width to be the absolute worst case scenario as it is fairly wide by my standards. I believe your scar width would be much better than that one.

But this person’s scalp scar serves a very valuable purpose. if you can look at that scar and say that it would be preferred to your skull shape issues, then it is a ‘safe’ aesthetic skull reshaping operation for you.

Dr. Barry Eppley

Indianapolis, Indiana