Facial Reshaping Surgery

Q: Dr. Eppley, I am interested in facial reshaping surgery. I want to remove my medium chin implant and get a sliding genioplasty. I want my chin to be a bit more squared. I also don’t want to sound like I am abnormal because I know I’m perfectly decent looking but I would also like some very subtle volume to my midface around the infraorbital-zygomatic area. And perhaps a bit more angularity on my jaw. I’m not dead set on any of this and I would like to listen to a professional. The last thing I want is something that looks fake, a plastic looking face or some disfigurement.

A: Thank you for sending your pictures. In answer to your desired facial reshaping surgery desires:

1) A sliding genioplasty will not give you a more square chin. While moving the chin bone can be effective for many chin dimensional changes, adding width or squareness is the one change it can not do. Only an implant can make an effective chin width shape change.

2) Augmentation to the undereye and cheek area is usually done by a special design infraorbital-malar implant design. The change can be subtle or more pronounced depending upon what look the patient is trying to achieve.

3) As for the jaw angle it is a bit hard to tell with a beard, but you do have thicker heavier skin. Whether adding some volume to the jaw angles would be beneficial has to be looked at carefully. The best jaw angle results come from patients with more lean faces where the implant definition can be more clearly seen

I understand what you are trying to achieve is to add some angularity to a face that is more round. More modest changes in multiple facial areas is what is needed to achieve that overall facial effect.

Dr. Barry Eppley
Indianapolis, Indiana