Lip Incompetence

Q: Dr. Eppley, I was curious about a bony genioplasty as a cure for lip incompetence. Have you had success with that in the past? It seems like a genioplasty is the only way to fix this. I have a quite large chin. Unlike many people with lip incompetence I am more in a need of vertical chin shortening if possible.

Also I’ve read a lot of your articles and you’ve mentioned doing septoplasty and turbinate reduction. I do have sinus issues and have been told my septum is slightly deviated and my turbinates are enlarged and my nasal passages are quote narrow. I don’t know if you could expand the nasal passageway, but that would definitely benefit my breathing. Do you still perform these ENT procedures. I would prefer to knock everything out at once. 

A: A sliding genioplasty may have some benefit in the improvement of lip incompetence in the horizontally deficiency chin. But whether it would be of any benefit in the vertically long chin is far less certain. At the least it would not be a detriment to it in the intramural vertical reduction wedge genioplasty.

For nasal airway function, inferior turbinate reduction offers a greater cross-sectional area improvement than septal correction in most patients. But any septal deviation would be corrected at the same time, even minor, due to anatomic proximity. 

Any form of nose surgery is commonly combined with any method of chin reshaping.

Dr. Barry Eppley

Indianapolis, Indiana