Facial Reshaping

Q: Dr. Eppley, I have recently mulled the idea of having plastic surgery over, but am unsure if I should follow through with it due to a couple reasons. For starters though I am a 19 year old male, and am looking for a manlier, more defined face if that makes sense? My chin and cheek bones seem to have no contour or shape. In addition to this, I broke my nose a few years back and wanted to see about having it realigned and thinned out. I had surgery on it when it first happened, but the doctor said he was limited by my age and the need for my face to continue to develop. The injury left my nose kind of puffier and with a hump too.

So my first worry is I am not sure what to expect results-wise, and paying thousands for something that I am a) unhappy with and b) would cost me thousands more to fix is unsettling. Secondly, I have an overbite because of how my teeth grew in, and my dad couldn’t afford braces, so I still have the ongoing problem.(you can probably tell in the pictures I upload). I am thinking it would be best to get my teeth fixed first now that I can afford it, and then see how that fixes my jawline and go from there.

My third worry is how an implant or reshaping would effect my voice, laugh, etc. I read some reviews where some patients said they couldn’t even smile the same or weren’t able to at all. Obviously that wouldn’t be good.

I had another one but can’t think of it. I can try and give you a picture of what I would like my face to look closer to in terms of chin, cheeks, etc, so let me know if that would help. I am just trying to gauge if I should bother with this type of surgery, and what the results may be in addition to if I should get my teeth fixed first, then focus on the rest.

Hopefully this all makes sense, I wanted to keep it short but that didn’t happen unfortunately.

Let me know what your advice is, and thanks a lot! I’ve done a bit of research but the Internet can be hard to trust at times.

A: Thank you for your inquiry. My advice is that if you have high worries that you will be unhappy with facial reshaping surgery….you will. Young male patients have a very high rate of revision with any form of facial reshaping surgery because they don’t have realistic expectation of either the process or the results. At least you recognize this up front.

Dr. Barry Eppley

Indianapolis, Indiana