What Type Of Plastic Surgery Can Make My Face Look Longer?

Q: Dr. Eppley ! My question to you is that I have a very short face. My midface is short and my ramus and lower jaw is also short which makes my face long horizontol and very short vertically. Also, my teeth of my upper jaw is way forward which is making my life miserable of having low self esteem. What type of surgery can correct this?

A: When there are jaw and teeth disharmony, one should look at the overall maxillomandibular and occlusal relatiopnships. Many times these require orthodontic and ultimately orthognathic surgical solutions. This is a path thaty should be pursued if one is young and this amount of effort can really be worth it over the long span of one’s life.

Short of major orthognathic surgery, there can be ‘camouflage’ solutions that can improve the facial skeletal balance. These are done using facial implants, usually off-the-shelf implants will work but sometimes it requires custom-designed implants. This is particularly useful in the vertically short face where the lower border of the lower jaw needs to be lengthened for which there is no way to do this without a custom implant design which is done off of a skull model made from the patient’s 3-D CT scan.

For the upper teeth protrusion, I would look into selective orthodontics. Even if you just pulled back the upper teeth only, that would make a cosmetic improvement for you and reduce the upper lip flaring.

Dr. Barry Eppley

Indianapolis Indiana