Plastic surgery for round face

Round Like the Moon - What is the Cause?

There are many people out there who seem to be more fleshy (or, subtlety aside, more fat) than they are because they have a round face. These are very frequently young, completely proportional people when height to weight ratio is regarded that appear to be overweight although they are not.

Although diet might be the default answer, there is very little fat on the face itself, and there will be slight, but not drastic, results. A person could be lean, but some of the defining bony features of the person's face might not be so prominent, and it will seem round and undefined. But these patients surely know that they are overweight, and some liposuction of the neck and some other lipectomies can maybe make some difference.

Liposuction

We have just mentioned that there is little fat on the face, but liposuction can do some work if extra fat tissue is adding to the problem. General liposuction is not possible, and only certain spots on the face are treated. These areas would include the area beneath the chin, the region of the neck, and the cheek region.

In some cases, it might be possible to remove pouches of fat around the eyes or cut off some excess skin. As a rule, patients with chubby faces have thick and elastic skin, which can, in this case, be too heavy and sag after liposuction.

Standards for an aesthetic face are dynamic. The current trend is towards a leaner looking face with preservation of the inverted triangle of youth. Procedures that have been reported to be employed for correction of a chubby face include buccal fat pad excision, facial liposuction and injection lipolysis. In addition to giving the face an aesthetic triangular cut, chin and malar augmentation may be performed. The rounded appearance at the angles may further be reduced by injection of Botulinum toxin into the masseter.

Forty patients who presented to us for correction of chubby (round) faces were analysed and treated by facial sculpting surgery, which included at least two of the procedures in combination. The procedures included facial liposuction, buccal fat pad excision, chin augmentation, malar augmentation and injection lipolysis. All cases were followed-up for a minimum of 6 months after surgery.
In 39 patients, we were able to achieve the desired results without any major complications. Minor complications like paraesthesiae in the region of the lower lip and abnormal mobility of the lower lip were encountered in five patients. We treated these patients with a course of systemic steroids for a period of 5 days, and the patients recovered uneventfully.
Of the 29 cases of buccal fat pad excision, three patients complained of restricted mouth opening in the early postoperative period, probably due to pain and spasm of the masticatory muscles. All of them responded well to jaw stretching exercises.
Chin implants were required in 35 (87.5%) cases. The number of patients requiring facial liposuction was 31 (77.5%), whereas injection lipolysis was performed in 11 (27.5%) patients.

✓ Fact confirmed: Facial sculpting: Comprehensive approach for aesthetic correction of round face M. K. Thomas, J. A. D’Silva, and A. J. Borole; 2012 Jan-Apr

Remodelling

Once the fat has been removed, some prominent facial features, such as the nose, could be modified for an improved visual effect. Typically, the nose's tip is narrowed, and its ridge is augmented, thus making the nose larger and less 'lost' and 'sunken' in the face.

Adding Up

What mostly determines how our face looks are cheekbones and chin. Even minor augmentation of the chin can drastically improve the appearance of the lower facial region, as it will pull up whatever is on the neck and thus make it less pronounced. In some rare cases, it also helps to introduce implants that will alter the angle of the jaw.

Modification by cheek implants is tricky, and one must make a good assessment of a computer-generated 3D model of the patient's face before deciding in what way to modify cheek appearance. Typically, these implants add to the triangular shape of the face, but their exact size and position must be carefully determined, as they could just make the face look wider.