If This Describes You, Consider Another Surgery Before Contouring Surgery!

Hello, this is Director Jo Hyun-woo of IPJEUK Plastic Surgery.

Perhaps because the cold winds of winter are approaching, more and more people who want contouring surgery have been coming in for consultations.

For those who think about contouring surgery simply because they want to make their face smaller, if contouring surgery is done incorrectly, the result may be difficult to reverse.

Today, I’ll talk about whether contouring surgery is necessary depending on your face shape.

Inverted triangle face

An inverted triangle face, as the name suggests, has a narrow lower jaw but becomes wider toward the skull.

People with this type of face often mistakenly think that reducing the cheekbones will make the face slimmer, but that is not the case.

I once wrote a column about people with wide temples.

If the temples, meaning the skull, are larger than the cheekbones, then reducing the cheekbones creates a very unnatural facial bone structure.

The skull area is wide while the cheekbones are sunken.

People often call this so-called an acorn-shaped face, and if it is partly covered by hair, it can look like a slim face. But when the forehead is visible as well, it can become a somewhat awkward face shape. In such cases, I recommend trying hair transplantation first.

In that case, the face can look much smaller.

Trapezoid face

When patients with this face shape say, “I want to make my face smaller with triple contouring,” I tell them to think about cheekbone surgery a little later.

The oval face we consider beautiful is a face shape where the area below the cheekbones gradually becomes slimmer.

If the cheekbones are reduced as well, the extent to which the lower face can be narrowed from the front may not be greater than the cheekbones, so even after surgery, the lower face may still look wider.

In cases like this, it is better to boldly give up cheekbone surgery and undergo surgery that can reduce the lower face, such as cortical osteotomy and masseter muscle resection, or procedures like jaw botox, in order to enhance the frontal effect of the lower face.

Also, if there is a lot of soft tissue in the lower face, meaning fat, then the lower face can be reduced through facial liposuction and buccal fat removal.

This is a case of a patient with a face close to a trapezoid shape who underwent jaw surgery and cortical osteotomy together to enhance the frontal effect of the lower face.

Rectangle face

A rectangular face can be described as one with wide cheekbones, wide temples, and a wide lower face.

This can be considered a slightly more difficult case than a trapezoid face shape.

For these patients, I actively recommend reducing the temple area through hair transplantation.

By reducing the temple area with hair transplantation and then performing triple contouring surgery, a sufficiently beautiful face shape can be created.

If you only do contouring surgery, it may again become an acorn-shaped face with only a large skull, so I do not think you should try to solve everything with just one surgery.

This is a case of a patient close to a rectangular face who underwent jaw surgery, cortical osteotomy, and chin surgery to address the angular lower face.

Bottle gourd-shaped face

These are patients whose facial bones are small but whose lower-face area is wide.

When an actual CT scan is taken, many of them have a narrow cheekbone width and a long lower jaw, but the bones themselves are not wide.

Many such people come in when they are over their 40s.

Basically, you can think of it as having a lot of sagging in the lower face.

If the issue is simply excess soft tissue, such as fat, you may also see results through liposuction and buccal fat removal.

This is a case of a patient close to a bottle gourd-shaped face who underwent cheekbone reduction, jaw surgery, cortical osteotomy, masseter muscle resection, and facial liposuction together to address the heavy-looking lower face.

However, if sagging skin is the main cause, it is better to consider a lift.

If you feel that the width of the cheekbones has decreased and the lower face has become larger as you have aged, then lifting the skin upward through a lift can help you return to a very youthful-looking face.

If you are relatively young, thread lifting alone can be sufficiently effective, and if there is a lot of excess skin, it may be better to consider an incision lift.

Today, I talked about how suitable contouring surgery is depending on face shape.

If you choose the appropriate surgery according to your own face shape, you may be able to achieve better results.

Thank you.