Facial Implants

Facial implants can enhance your appearance and may bolster your self-esteem. If you are looking for improvement, not perfection, in your appearance and are realistic in your expectations, you may find that a facial implant is the right choice for you.

Frequently, these implants will help provide a more harmonious balance to your face and features so that you may feel better about the way you look.

Facial implants can produce some remarkable changes. Problems rarely occur, but you need to be informed about such possibilities.

Chin Surgery

Cosmetic chin surgery aims to give you a stronger, firmer chin, with a better profile. The improvement is permanent. About a half of cosmetic chin surgery is done alone. Usually this surgery is combined with another cosmetic operation such as a "nose job" or a facelift.

This operation is usually done in an outpatient surgery center or a hospital operating room. The surgery is usually done with local anesthesia and sedation. You can go home the same day.

Insertion of a chin implant may take anywhere from thirty minutes to an hour. During the procedure, the surgeon selects the proper size and shape implant to enhance your appearance and inserts it into a pocket over the front of the jawbone. The small incision to create the pocket and insert the implant is placed inside the mouth (along the lower lip) or in the skin just under the chin area. Usually, the chin is taped after surgery to minimize swelling and discomfort.

Sutures in the skin will be removed in five to seven days. If an intra-oral incision is used, the sutures will dissolve.

You will experience some discomfort and swelling in the affected area for several days. It's normal to experience some temporary difficulty with smiling and talking. Because your chin is stiff, brushing and flossing your teeth will be more difficult than usual, your mouth won't open as fully as it usually does, especially if your surgery was done through an incision in your inner lower lip.

After the operation, black and blue marks may be visible around the chin and neck. Your chin will be numb for at least two weeks and often as long as six weeks. Some numbness may last up to six months.

Post Op. Instructions:

Gentle or no flossing for a week.
Gentle brushing, often with a child's toothbrush.
Rinsing your mouth three or four times a day with salt water, salt and peroxide in water or an antibiotic mouthwash.
Liquid food for the first day. Soft food for the next five days. Choice of food such as soup, ice cream, milkshakes, puddings, possibly ground meat, but nothing that requires chewing or is highly salted or spiced.

After a chin implant you can usually go back to work on the sixth day. You should do no sports for a week.

Cheek Surgery

The technical name for this procedure is cheek implant or malar implant. Cheek implant surgery aims to create a higher cheek line, giving your midface more definition. The operation is often helpful to actors, actresses, and models who need the cheek prominence to give them facial projection on film or in a photograph. The surgery result is permanent. You can have a cheek implant whenever you decide that your cheekbones need more fullness.

This operation is done on an outpatient basis in a surgery center or a hospital outpatient operating room. Cheek implants are usually done under local anesthesia with sedation and takes about forty-five minutes to one hour to do. The incision will be made either inside your upper lip or you lower eyelid. A pocket is then formed and an implant is inserted.

After surgery, a dressing will be applied to minimize discomfort and swelling. The severity and duration of such side effects may vary, especially if another cosmetic procedure was performed at the same time.

You should not have pain after this operation, but your cheeks will feel stiff and unnatural. You will not talk naturally both as a result of the anesthesia numbing facial nerves and from swelling. You will be unable to smile comfortably for several days. The swelling may affect your jaw joint, so that yawning and chewing feel temporarily uncomfortable. The stiffness in your face subsides rapidly after the first five days and is gone within seven to fourteen days, although you may feel aware that you aren't back to normal for another month.

You will be able to drink right after surgery, but you will not be able to eat solid food for several days, as it may irritate the incision inside your upper lip. After a day or two, you may develop some faint yellow or bluish bruising on your lower cheek, which should fade in seven to ten days. Although your cheeks are swollen for about two weeks, this is often a symmetrical puffiness that attracts little attention.

Usually you will have tape strips placed across your cheeks. This not only helps keep the swelling down and the implant in place but also reminds you not to move your face too much. These strips will be removed five days after the surgery

You will be asked not to brush you upper teeth until the incisions are healed at about day six. Use a child's toothbrush so that you don't have to open your mouth wide to brush your back teeth, but don't brush the front near the incision. You will also be asked to avoid strong mouth rinses, but you should swish out your mouth several times a day with slightly salty water. After about day six, you can brush regularly. After ten days, you should be able to return to regular dental care such as floss and gum picks.

Stitches used to close the incisions inside your mouth usually dissolve within about ten days. You can usually return to work by day six. You can resume stretching exercises by days six to eight, but bending over will make your cheeks swell and ache.

Complications are very rare. Under normal circumstances, most people find this operation easier to recover from than they had expected.

Before	After

Dr. Rodrigo Araya
Cima San Jose Hospital
Tower # 2, Floor # 2, office # 211
Escazú, San José, Costa Rica
Tel: (506) 2208-8211
Fax: (506) 2208-8261
Web Site: http://www.a-plastic-surgeon.com
E-mail: arayamd@a-plastic-surgeon.com