Are My Chin and Jaw Augmentation Goals Achievable?

Q: Dr. Eppley, I’ve been following some of your posts on Real Self and I just had a few questions. I was wondering if my chin/jaw goals are achievable or not. So, I’ve attached 6 frontal pictures of myself, followed by 6 profile pictures, to give you a good idea of what I look like at the moment. My own assessment is as follows:

1. My jaw vertical development is quite bad; the chin is not tall enough.

2. When viewed from the front, my jaw seems quite round/feminine. 

I was wanting to address (1) and (2). In particular, for (1) I’m wanting to get a taller chin by around 1 cm, and for (2) I’m wanting to get a more angular jaw from the front (however I don’t want the jaw to be any wider than it is; just more angular). I was wondering if all this is possible given my starting point? (BTW, in addition to the six frontal pictures and six profile pictures of what I look like currently, I’ve also attached at the end a morph of what I want my chin/jaw to look like; would you say this morph is achievable?) 

A: Thank you for your inquiry and sending all of your facial pictures to which I can say the following about your chin and jawline reshaping objectives:

1) What you have is a lack of adequate vertical development of the lower jaw with a nearly flat mandibular plane angle.What you are tying to achieve is vertical jawline lengthening which is primarily in the chin and tapers backward towards the angle.

2) There are three ways to try and make this lower jaw shape change:

    a) Chin wing osteotomy

    b) Vertical opening sliding genioplasty combined with custom lateral jawline implants (done either as one or two stages)

    c) Custom Inferior border implant

Each of these three approaches has their advantages and disadvantages whose detailed description exceeds this method of communication. But regardless of the method the greatest amount of vertical lengthening is at the chin and is probably in the 10 to 12mms range.

Dr. Barry Eppley

Indianapolis, Indiana