Why Should You Be Careful About Opening Your Mouth After Cheekbone Surgery?

Hello. I’m Dr. Jo Hyun-woo of Injeong Plastic Surgery.

Today, I’d like to talk about why you should be careful about opening your mouth, which is one of the precautions after cheekbone surgery.

This is an illustration showing the surgical process of cheekbone reduction.

As you can see, cheekbone reduction surgery involves completely osteotomizing the 45-degree cheekbone and the posterior cheekbone, repositioning them, and then fixing them again.

You may have experienced this yourself or seen it in life: when an arm or leg bone breaks, we fix the bone again with pins and immobilize the arm or leg with a cast so it cannot move.

If the cheekbone in our face breaks, it would be nice to fix it with pins and put it in a cast, but since we also have to eat and speak, we cannot put a cast on the face. So the thing we can do is avoid opening the mouth too much.

As you can see in the illustration above, our chewing muscles extend across and attach between the jawbone and the cheekbone.

So when we perform everyday chewing movements such as opening our mouth or chewing food, the movement of the jawbone pulls on the cheekbone.

Even if the front and back of the cheekbone have both been fixed, repeated stimulation may loosen the fixation, and strong stimulation may even break the fixation pin. A temporary muscular force may not be very strong, but continuous stimulation to the same area can feel very intense.

Therefore, after cheekbone reduction surgery, you are advised to avoid chewing hard or chewy foods and to avoid opening your mouth too widely.

Of course, doctors may differ in how long they recommend limiting these movements, but based on my experience, I advise being careful for about one month.

This is because if you do not move it for a long period, the temporomandibular joint can become stiff, making movement very difficult.

230-degree cheekbone reduction surgery

When a cast is removed from the arm, we sometimes do rehabilitation exercises at first because the joint does not move well.

Likewise, after about one month, you can practice opening your mouth so that the temporomandibular joint can return to its previous state.

You should never think vaguely, “It will go back to how it was on its own over time,” without doing anything.

You must do rehabilitation exercises in order to return to your previous mouth-opening range.

Cheekbone reduction surgery, square jaw reduction surgery, masseter muscle resection

Some people even say that they still cannot open their mouth after one year.

If this happens, the temporomandibular joint may have become so stiff that recovery can be very difficult, so you must begin practicing mouth opening after about one month.

For this type of recovery process, it would be best to follow the guidance of the hospital and doctor who performed the surgery.

Today, I explained the precautions that must be followed after cheekbone surgery.

Now, the cold winter is approaching once again. Please take care of your health, and I will come back with another topic.

Thank you.