Can My Facial Asymmetry Be Fixed?

Q: Dr. Eppley, I am interested in facial asymmetry correction. My face is crooked, particularly my chin and jaw. When I smile my chin pulls to the left and makes the jaw asymmetry look worse as it points to the left. The rest if my face on the left side is also uneven. My left eye and eyebrow are lower and my cheekbone seems smaller. When I look in the mirror I don’t look too bad but it looks much worse obvious in pictures. Can my facial asymmetry be fixed?

A: Like many cases of facial asymmetry, it rarely is just one area of the face. What you are describing is a more complete unilateral or one-sided facial underdevelopment. This is evidenced by a lower eyebrow and eyeball position, a flatter cheek and a shorter jawline distance from chin back to the jaw angles. In essence the vertical length of the face is shorter on your left side than your right. The jaw asymmetry in particular is magnified when you smile as the soft tissue of the chin is pulled back and deviates to the less developed side.

There are a variety of facial asymmetry procedures that can be done from the eyebrow down to the jawline.  What you would do depends on how much of the facial asymmetry you want to treat. The chin/jawline often displays the most severe aspects of facial asymmetry and is often the most important area for many patients to correct. This can be treated by a sliding genioplasty to realign the bony chin to the midline. This can be possibly combined with a small jaw angle implant in the back to completely lengthen the entire jawline.

Dr. Barry Eppley

Indianapolis, Indiana