Is Cheekbone Reduction Surgery the Only Answer for Cheekbones That Rise When You Smile?

Hello. I’m Dr. Jo Hyun-woo from Inje Plastic Surgery.

Lately, blog updates have been a bit slow.

I’ll use this post to get back to my original mindset while writing.

Today’s topic is cheekbones. Is bone surgery the only answer?

One of the questions many patients ask is:

"Can cheekbones be fixed entirely with surgery?"

In fact, the cheekbones that appear to rise when you smile are mostly due to the movement of muscle and fat.

What cheekbone reduction surgery can reduce is bone,

but the area that rises when you smile is soft tissue such as fat and muscle,

so cheekbone reduction surgery alone cannot completely solve the issue.

As you can see in the CT image above, the blue-marked area is the 45-degree cheekbone area,

and the red-marked area is the soft tissue area.

Even with cheekbone reduction surgery, the amount of cheekbone reduction does not exceed 5 mm.

Therefore, for patients like the one in the CT image above, whose soft tissue makes up a large proportion,

even if the size of the cheekbone is reduced through cheekbone reduction surgery,

the effect may not feel very significant when smiling compared to before surgery.

For that reason, if fat in the red-marked area is also removed by liposuction to reduce the proportion of soft tissue,

you can feel the effect of a reduced 45-degree area.

Depending on the patient, instead of liposuction, you may also achieve some effect with injections that reduce fat, such as contour injections.

If the main cause of stress is cheekbones that rise when you smile, it may be better to consider not only bone surgery

but also liposuction or contour injections.

These days, facial contouring surgery is no longer an era where everything is solved by bone cutting or resection alone.

Only by diagnosing each patient individually and addressing the soft tissue can more effective

results be achieved.

This was Dr. Jo Hyun-woo, a board-certified plastic surgeon.