Should A Chin Implant Replacement Be Staged?

Q: Dr. Eppley, Should I take out a 10 year old chin implant (silicone button type) first several months before a sliding genioplasty? Or can it be done at the same session as the genioplasty? If the latter (keep chin implant in until genioplasty operation), will it affect the accuracy of the cephalometric analysis? What about scar tissue – should it be removed first several months and healed up before the genioplasty? Which way is recommended to produce the result?

A: A sliding genioplasty is a good chin implant replacement method. It can fill the void left by the removal of the chin implant and replaces it with one’s own chin bone. There is no reason to stage the replacement of a chin implant with a sliding genioplasty. That creates an additional operation that provides no benefit to treatment planning or making the tissue bed any better prepared. The chin implant and its scar tissue layer against the bone can easily be removed and the sliding genioplasty performed unimpeded. It is not necessary to remove the capsule (scar tissue) up against the soft tissue side of the chin. The sliding genioplasty also provides the opportunity to creat different dimensional changes than an implant. (such as vertical lengthening, vertical chin shortening, chin narrowing/widening)

Dr. Barry Eppley

Indianapolis, Indiana