Custom Jawline Implant

Q: Dr. Eppley, I hope this email finds you well. Next month will mark one year since I had my custom jawline implant augmentation surgery with you. To say I am happy with the results is an understatement. I think you did a fantastic job in selecting and placing the implants.  Here are recent pictures.

As I mentioned, I am very very happy with the results. I just have one question. I have been working out quite actively over the past year, and I am almost 20 pounds heavier (mostly lean muscle) than when I saw you last year for my surgery. I’m still working out and continuing to change my physique so I wouldn’t want to do anything just yet, but my question is as follows: Do you think I could get another augmentation to make the jawline more pronounced? I would think the implants would need more width as well as more of a vertical component. Also, would I benefit from perioral and/or buccal fat removal? 

Thanks again and I look forward to hearing from you.

A:Thank you for the one year followup and I am very happy to hear of your satisfaction with the result. For your and my interest I have attached your matched before and after results from your surgery.

The question about replacing your existing custom jawline implant with a new one is not whether it can be done (as it can) but whether it should be done. From that perspective I would offer the following comments to ponder:

1) Would you be keeping this new physique lifelong? You wouldn’t want to place a new implant now for your current body shape and weight only to get thinner later and have it look too big. 

2) Any implant surgery is a gamble both in the aesthetic outcome and in the potential for risks. You have spun the roulette wheel twice so to speak and have won each time. But that is not an assurance that doing it a third time would result in such good fortune. Complications can and do happen…and such a complication like an infection could risk losing it all. Statistically speaking, each new surgery is an independent event for which the outcome of past events has no relevance.

Dr. Barry Eppley
Indianapolis, Indiana