Will a Vertical Lengthening Chin Implant Work For Me?

Q: Dr. Eppley, Since I live out of town I assume that the creation of a custom chin implant is a process which would probably (?) necessitate my traveling to Indiana more than once. It would take a lot of effort for me to travel for the actual surgery. Therefore, I was hoping that the Implantech off-the shelf VLC chin implant would work for me. Your last email seems to indicate that this type of standard chin implant might not work for me.

A: In answer to your chin implant questions>

1) A custom implant approach is all done remotely, meaning you never have to come here to get the scan or design the implant. You only come here for the surgery.

2) But for the sake of further discussion on the less than ideal approach of trying to make a standard chin implant work, the VLC provides an equal amount of horizontal projection as well as vertical so the implant would have to be significantly modified in surgery to try and create the pure vertical lengthening effect. You simply can not use the VLC implant as it was designed in your case of vertical chin elongation.

3) And for the sake of thoroughness on the topic of vertical chin lengthening, the intraoral vertical lengthening bony genioplasty is the traditional approach to accomplishing that and it works well when the lengthening needed is 7mms or more….which an implant does not do well beyond that length requirement due to the need for the soft tissue chin pad to stretch over the implant.

4) As an overview you have three options for your vertical chin elongation which would be in the ideal order of:  vertical lengthening bony genioplasty, custom chin implant and modified VLC standard implant.

Dr. Barry Eppley

Indianapolis, Indiana