Consultation and Design Before Facial Contouring Surgery

Hello, I am Dr. Jo Hyun-woo of 3D Plastic Surgery.

If you have been following my columns or YouTube channel consistently, you probably already know that preoperative consultation is even more important than the surgery itself.

If surgery is carried out without a consultation about the areas you want to change before the operation, it is of course possible to create a beautiful bone shape, but that shape may not become the facial contour the patient wanted.

Therefore, before surgery, I make an effort to have 충분한 상담 with patients so I can understand the needs they want and hope for.

Some patients come in after being told in consultation that they must undergo all three contouring procedures, but after actually talking things through, if their complex is only with the cheekbones, I recommend proceeding with cheekbone surgery first. Many people feel satisfied and live with greater confidence once only the area that bothered them has been addressed.

Beauty does not have an absolute standard.

A face that one person thinks is beautiful may not seem that way to another, and because each doctor has a different standard of beauty, simply trusting the process and leaving everything in someone else's hands can lead to truly the worst outcome.

A patient who underwent 3D cheekbone reduction surgery due to concerns about protruding 45-degree cheekbones and side cheekbones

If you go in for cheekbone surgery and end up proceeding with the chin as well because you are told it will otherwise stand out more, you may actually end up with a face whose charm is diminished.

So before surgery, it is important to clearly say which areas you feel are your complexes and to have surgery that improves those areas.

For example, if someone whose face appears long comes in for a consultation and undergoes square jaw surgery without any particular discussion, it can lead to the worst result, making the facial bones look even longer.

If I show this with a bone image:

CT before square jaw surgery

A person with the square jaw bone shown in the photo above

Square jaw surgery that makes the face appear even longer

If square jaw surgery is performed like this, people like this will end up with a face that looks 100% longer.

If you want to reduce the length of the face, surgery must be performed while looking at the CT and the patient’s face together, preserving the angle of the square jaw while cutting along a long curve all the way to the chin so that the face can appear shorter, as in the next CT.

Square jaw surgery that makes a long face look shorter

There are also several things to consider when performing cheekbone surgery.

Is it really appropriate for your proportions to push in the side cheekbones without exception? How much should the 45-degree cheekbones be reduced to match your own facial proportions? And for people with large cheekbones beside the eyes, the osteotomy line of the bone may also differ.

Rather than insisting on doing as much as possible, it is important to carefully review several conditions through consultation and design the surgery to suit your own facial bones.

A patient who underwent square jaw surgery and chin tip surgery because of concerns about a long-looking face

Many people are curious about how their face will change before surgery.

In fact, before-and-after virtual plastic surgery used to be very popular in the past.

However, the important thing is that there were many cases where that virtual result did not actually connect to reality, so these days the trend is not to use virtual plastic surgery very much.

Then how can we predict facial changes?

A patient who underwent 230-degree 3D cheekbone reduction surgery due to concerns about protruding side cheekbones

Referring to the surgical results of people whose faces are similar to your own is extremely helpful.

If the bone shape and soft tissue are similar, you can think that a very similar result can be achieved.

My personal belief is that if you have a good consultation before surgery, more than 80% of the surgery is already done well.

If we assume that the surgical method and the skill to produce results are things any experienced specialist would know and have, then it is fair to say that the difference in postoperative results is determined by the preoperative consultation.

Therefore, when you have a consultation, be sure to refer to the results of other surgical patients, and rather than simply expecting a result that makes the face look beautiful, find a face similar to your own and compare the before and after images. That can help you predict the future a little better.

Thank you.