In considering rhinoplasty surgery, your face must be considered as a whole. The nose must be particularly assessed in reference to another horizontally projecting facial feature…the chin. If your chin is small, you may benefit from a chin implant. The reason is that the size of the chin changes the way you, and others, perceive the size of your nose. If one’s nose is big, a small chin makes it look even bigger.
Some rhinoplasties are well-served with a chin implant. Increasing chin projection can take attention away from an over-protruding nose. This is particularly true when the nose is quite large as a rhinoplasty can only reduce it so much. In these circumstances, a chin implant becomes a good companion to the nose.
A chin implant can easily be done at the same time as the rhinoplasty. Done together, a ying and a yang facial effect is seen creating a more dramatic effect than either one alone. While the rhinoplasty is usually the more profoundly changing procedure, a chin augmentation should not be underestimated. The chin implant is a relatively simple procedure compared to the rhinoplasty but its effects can be profound.
The standard for judging just how far forward the chin should be, when looking at the profile, is that the front of the chin should come as far forward as a vertical line drop from the upper and lower lips. Using two mirrors to see your profile, you can tell if it may be helpful. But computer imaging will give you the most accurate assessment and should be done in all rhinoplasty surgeries. It provides the means to understand what the outcome would be with and without a chin implant and with different chin implant sizes. The patient can compare side by side their existing profile with the anticipated result.Like the nose, chin augmentation also causes a change in the frontal view and not just in a profile perspective. Chin implants cause less changes in this dimension. Since most of today’s chin implants are wrap around and U-shaped, they make the chin more full by making it slightly wider. For this reason, the type of chin implants used in women may be of the central or button style…or the wings of the wrap around implant trimmed. This will keep the chin width more narrow in the frontal view for women.
In my Indianapolis plastic surgery practice, I always perform the chin augmentation prior to the rhinoplasty. This is to avoid contaminating the implant with bacteria that may be native to the nose but will likely cause an infection if inadvertently placed under the skin around a synthetic implant.
Dr. Barry Eppley
Indianapolis, Indiana