Cleft Chin Surgery

Q: Dr. Eppley, I am a female with a cleft chin and overactive/large mentalis muscle which creates pitting or orange peel texture in the chin area. If I have my cleft chin surgery to get it corrected, can it also correct the orange peel texture so I don’t have to keep getting Botox injections every 2 months? I am missing a little piece of bone at bottom of my chin due to the cleft chin. So I wouldn’t want a regular chin implant, but just something to fill in this dent. I don’t want to have to keep getting Botox or filler injections. I want something permanent.

A: You have two chin issues which are independent of each other. Cleft chin surgery for removing the cleft is not really based on putting a modified chin implant onto the bone. That is just a minor part of the correction. Most of the chin cleft resides in the overlying soft tissue which requires fat injections in addition to the bone implant.

The mentalis muscle irregularities/dimpling are a different issue which is not going to be improved by a chin cleft surgery. Short of Botox injections they are few other effective treatments. Fat injections into the dynamic dimpled areas would be the only other treatment option whose effectiveness can not be assured.

Dr. Barry Eppley

Indianapolis, Indiana