Are These Facial Surgery Results Possible?

Q: Dr. Eppley, I would like to know if the following facial surgery results are possible.

1) With a custom cheek/orbital implant can I augment all of the inferior, lateral, and superior orbital rims along with a small portion of the malar bone?

2) Can off-the-shelf jaw angle implants guarantee that my jaw angles will look more squared/pointed rather than U shaped and heavy?

3) With a rhinoplasty do you believe you can achieve an aesthetically pleasing nose job that keeps a lot of masculinity to my nose. (i.e., keeping a majority of the nasal bone projection and width while still projecting the tip out a slight bit and straightening the nasal bone and cartilage from a frontal view?

A: In answer to your questions:

While any design can be made for custom cheek and orbital implants, there are limitations to the surgical access to place them. Through a lower eyelid incision, a custom implant can be placed to cover the inferior and lower lateral orbital rim and cheek, but not the upper lateral orbital rim or superior orbital rim. (those require a coronal scalp incision for placement)
A preformed off-the-shelf jaw angle implant that I commonly use has a more flared and square jaw angle point to it that does not usually cause a rounded jaw angle look. (that patient undoubtably has the traditional rounded style of silicone jaw angle implant that is what is available to most surgeons)
I believe your thinoplasty goals are achieveable as you have defined them and as we have looked at them with computer imaging in the past.

With that being said, let me make some general statements based on a lot of experience with male facial structural surgery. (of which all your procedures would qualify) It is important to understand that there are no guarantees in surgery. No surgeon can guarantee that any specific outcome will be obtained no matter how much thought goes into it beforehand. Aesthetic surgery involves risk of which the biggest one is less than the desired result. I mention this as you have used the term ‘guaranteed’, this is not an assurance I can give you. In the same vein, it is important to also understand that male facial restructuring is associated with a notoriously high rate of revisional surgery, probably approximating 25% to 33%. This is of paramount note in the young male patient who often is very difficult to please in their search for an optimal result. A good rule of thumb is that the patient will put twice the amount of time assessing their result after surgery than what they spent beforehand…hence leading to such high revisional rates. Slight asymmetries and imperfections are very poorly tolerated in the young male patient.

I mention these issues as you need to factor these considerations also into whether the facial surgeries we have discussed are for you, your expectations and your level of risk tolerance.

Dr. Barry Eppley

Indianapolis, Indiana