Many people want rhinoplasty surgery to have a better profile. But sometimes rhinoplasty is not enough for having a fine and balanced profile, especially in people with recessive chin and forehead characteristics. In these situations, aesthetic operation of nose may not be sufficient alone to balance the profile. That is how we reduce the nose of a person with recessive chin however the nose still remains big and is distorting the balance of the profile. The diagnosis of these people in the preoperative phase requires evaluating the characteristics of chin and forehead and the chin needs to be built on by using fat transfer or an implant if it is necessary. If the forehead is recessive we can make the fat transfer to forehead area. In this way, when the chin and the forehead is balanced together with aesthetic nose surgery, a much more pleasant and attractive profile emerges. I call this process as “facial profile aesthetics”.

Building out the recessive chin is the mostly applied additional operation which is carried out together with aesthetic nose surgery. Then how can we understand whether our chin is recessive or jutting? This is very easy. In a photograph from the side, when you draw a vertical line from the tip of the lower lip, your jaw must be a few millimetres behind this line shaft.

There are several aesthetic surgery techniques in order to build up the chin of people with recessive or small chin. The first of them is “fat transfer” to chin area. I prefer this technique for the cases in which the patient is not suffered from so heavily recessed chin. The operation is carried out through specific channels created in frontal and side chin and by transferring approximately 10-12 cc. fat which is carefully taken from the patient herself / himself. Approximately 30-50 percent of the fat transferred through this technique remains permanent and actually it is an effective technique.

The second technique involves application of an implant to frontal chin. This method is carried out through a cut made in the mouth in order to prevent scars and a chin implant is placed on the jawbone. Therefore, the cut in mouth is closed by using own melting sutures.

Widely used chin implants are made of materials called silicon, med por and polypropylene mesh. Silicon and med por are ready-made materials. The polypropylene mesh is prepared by the surgeon during the operation in accordance with your chin characteristics. I frequently use fat transfer and polypropylene mesh implants in my operations. The reason is that silicone implants can melt in the jaw bone in the long term and med por implants often requires to be screwed up to the jaw bone.

The material called polypropylene mesh is actually used in hernia surgery for keeping herniated intestines in the abdomen area and it is a safe material proven in thousands of cases until today. This material is specifically designed for the patient in intra-operative stage and being placed into the jaw and it adapts itself to the patient’s texture in the postoperative stage.

In the year 2011 we have published the world’s most extensive series on this topic in one of the Europe’s prestigious scientific journals European Archives of Otolaryngology and have received very good feedbacks.

For those interested, see: “Prolene mesh mentoplasty. İlhan AE, Kayabasoglu G, Kazikdas KC, Goksel A. Eur Arch Otorhinolaryngol. 2011 Apr;268(4):585-9. Epub 2010 Sep 15.”

The best feature of chin build up surgeries made by using this technique is characterised by very quick recovery and certain absence of unwanted results related with rejection or reaction.

When it is performed in conjunction with nose aesthetic surgery, the recovery period is same as in rhinoplasty so it does not require any additional time. The patient is required to pay attention to mouth hygiene and to use an additional antibiotic for a week against the risk of infection.