Will A Brow Bone Implant Give Me A Deep Set Eye Look?

Q: Dr. Eppley, I’m inquiring about the brow bone augmentation. I’ve been trying to find a way to have deep set eyes. I went to a doctor in L.A. and he suggested orbital decompression, which sounds dangerous. So I’ve been searching around the internet and I found of Dr Eppley’s before/after picture of a patient , under “forehead brow bone and temporal contouring” patient 8 and 9, (esp 8), desire for more prominent brow bones and forehead.

I’m thinking of doing fillers first to see if it would do the same effect, even temporary. In this case at least I know if it would look good on me. Maybe it’s a waste of money and just go straight to the implant.

Thank you,

A: In answer to your questions in regard  to the pursuit of deep set eyes:

1) Orbital decompression is not a dangerous procedure. It is just the lowering of the anterior bony floor of the orbit which allows the eye to drop back and in a few millimeters. It could be a useful adjunctive procedure to brow bone augmentation. But it is unlikely alone to create deep set eyes…but that depends on what your natural anatomy is.

2) Certainly the reverse approach, augmenting the orbital rims , has a more powerful effect…again based on your natural anatomy.

3) A good way to test #2 is with computer imaging using your pictures to look at brow bone augmentation changes. I will need three pictures to do so. (front, side and ¾ views) The latter two are the most important when looking at any type o forehead and/or brow bone augmentation.

4) Injectable fillers can always be a good test of any facial augmentative change provided the volume of filler approximates the volume of the implant that will be used to create the permanent effect. For example in a brow bone implant typical volume is in the 4 to 6cc range. Fillers come in 1cc syringes. So it is easy to see that the effect between fillers and implants are not similar. Thus fillers are fine to try as long as one recognizes that implants have a far more powerful augmentative effect  depending upon the size of the facial area being augmented.

Dr. Barry Eppley

World-Renowned Plastic Surgeon