Can Orbito-Malar Implants Be Combinbed with a Deep Plane Facelift?

Q: Dr. Eppley, O have been researching deep plane facelifts and am seeking advice on how to combine that with an orbital-malar implant.

A:Thank you for your inquiry and sending your picture and that of the AI generated image. As you have astutely noted an Ai image is an ideal goal that can never be fully achieved. An Ai image makes many other soft tissue changes but either aren’t in the scope of what the patient wants to do or are simply not possible. For example in your AI image it has completely eliminated your nasolabial folds (not possible with any form of the facelift), enlarged your lips, narrowed your nostrils and even changed your eye color.

But that being said it is tremendously useful from a structural standpoint because those are changes that are very possible. Eliminating/reducing your undereye hollowing with higher cheekbones exactly is what an infraorbital – malar implant can do and will produce higher cheekbones and a lifting effect that can never be achieved In any type of facelift surgery.

If the question you are asking is can you combine a deep plane facelift with custom infraorbital-malar implants and that answer is absolutely.  That is not a technical question but a logistical one. The key to that combination, as it is with any type of niche procedure in plastic surgery, is finding a surgeon who is capable of doing both. The facelift part of that equation is easy, it is the custom implant part that becomes more difficult given the rarity of surgeons are actually perform it.

But if you had to stage it, and I’m not saying you should, you would do the custom implant first to establish the skeletal foundation and then do the facelift secondarily.

Dr. Barry Eppley

Plastic Surgeon