V-Line Jaw Surgery

Q: Dr. Eppley, I had a v-line jaw surgery in Seoul, Korea and feel that it doesn’t suit my face. Is there a way to reverse it? I fear that it will cause me to prematurely age…it has already given me jowls.

A: While V-line jaw surgery can be very effective at making the jawline/chin smaller, it does create the potential for loss of skeletal support to the overlying tissues. Usually in young people this is not a major concern because the have very good elastic properties of the soft tissue which can adequately shrink down to the reduced jawline bone structure. But if overdone or in some older patients a jawline reduction can result in a soft tissue sag most commonly seen in the jowl area. A V-line jawline reduction can be reversed and requires a custom jawline implant to do so. I have done several of these procedures and the implant is designed based on a 3D CT scan. In some patients I have been fortunate enough that the patient had an original 3D CT scan prior to their jawline reduction surgery so the new and old 3D CT scans could be overlaid and an exact replica of their original jawline structure recreated. In other cases no such prior 3D CT scan existed so the custom jawline implant design had to be based on what was believed to be the original jawline bone structure. In one case, a male patent even went as far as augmenting his jawline far further that what his original jawline structure was like before the jawline reduction.

In short, a V-line jawline surgery can be reversed by a custom jawline implant.

Dr. Barry Eppley

Indianapolis, Indiana