I developed cheekbone asymmetry due to side effects from quick cheekbone reduction surgery. What should I do? Explained by a board-certified plastic surgeon.

I visited after developing facial asymmetry and hollowness following cheekbone surgery.

"The left side cheekbone has been reduced a lot, but the 45-degree angle is still the same.

The front of the right side is sunken, and the side cheekbone is still the same.

When I wash my face, I can feel the sunken area in the front,

and because there is little volume, it looks saggy."

These are symptoms that developed after cheekbone surgery at a plastic surgery clinic, but it may be hard to understand from words alone, so let’s look at the CT scan.

This is the left cheekbone, which the patient said was reduced a lot. Looking into why it was reduced so much, I can see an unintended fracture line (red arrow).

The intended term would be osteotomy, but because that area was not intended, the correct term here is fracture.

It is presumed that small gaps were made through the skin in the front cheekbone area and the zygomatic arch area, then the bone was cut there, and pressure was applied from the outside to push it inward.

While being pushed inward, the left cheekbone could not withstand the force, and the area that had not been osteotomized fractured instead. The result would naturally end up more sunken than expected.

Even so, since the bones on the left side have remained in place for several years after surgery, we decided not to perform revision surgery this time.

The problem was the right side.

If you look at the green arrow, the midface is sunken. The patient said the protruding bone in the front can be felt when washing the face, and the front cheekbone volume had also been lost.

The side cheekbone was not reduced enough because the osteotomy line of the zygomatic arch was placed too far back, so compared with the left side, which had become even smaller, the side cheekbone that remained relatively unchanged looked larger.

Because the side cheekbone did not come in, but was pushed inward enough to cause a fracture, the front area became sunken.......

Looking at the website of the plastic surgery clinic where the operation was performed, there is, as expected, mention of minimal incision and minimal dissection.

As I mentioned in the facelift section: https://blog.naver.com/creating_beauty/222070644198

"Mini," "minimal," or "quick" means that the incision is small and recovery is fast, but it also means the field of view is narrow, dissection is difficult, and correction may be incomplete.

If you cannot see it with your eyes, it is difficult to predict the exact result. Also, in the case of the cheekbone, if it becomes sunken, there is no way to lift it back up. I imagine the doctor who performed the surgery must have been flustered as well. If consent had been obtained for the possibility of opening the mouth, I wonder whether they would have opened it and corrected it.

Of course, faster is good, and a shorter recovery period is also good. However, the catch is not only that the result may fall short of expectations, but that the outcome itself can turn out differently.

Surgery should be performed using a proven method that has been validated over a long period of time.

For this patient, surgery was performed because correcting the side cheekbone asymmetry and the sunken front cheek area was necessary.

The side cheekbone has been reduced by the intended amount (blue arrow), and the front cheekbone has been reconstructed (yellow arrow), removing the hollow area.

Today's lesson

<Let's not be fooled by the words "mini," "quick," and "minimal." >

<If you have additional questions, please leave a private comment, and I will kindly answer them. Thank you.>