Category: custom facial implants

The Six-Piece Custom PEEK Jawline Implant

Why do custom jawlione implants with larger jaw angle segments have the jaw angle segment split into two pieces changing a four piece to a six piece mplant design? With PEEK, the reason can be even more restrictive than with a large silicone jawline implant: the problem is not simply the total number of pieces. Read More…

How To Design a PEEK Jawline Implant for Optimal Intraoperaive Placement

The success of any jawline implant is a combination of design and placement. It doesn’t matter how well an implant is designed if its placement on the bone doses not correlate closely to the design file. Axxurate placement is a combination of surgical skill and various design features. An implant’s design can help or work Read More…

PEEK Custom Jawline Implant Placement Challenges Case Example

A PEEK wraparound jawline implant usually needs to be made in multiple pieces because PEEK is very rigid. A full jawline implant can extend from one mandibular angle, across the chin, to the opposite angle. Unlike silicone, PEEK cannot flex enough to pass that entire shape through the relatively small incisions used for placement. Dividing Read More…

Custom Facial Implants and Infection Risk – Part 3. Nonporous Smooth Surfaces (Silicone vs PEEK)

For custom facial implants, the most useful way to think about silicone versus PEEK is that both can be manufactured as dense, nonporous implants, so the comparison becomes much cleaner than silicone versus Medpor. Once porosity is removed, surface finish and biologic conditioning probably matter at least as much as the polymer’s nominal surface energy. Read More…

Custom Facial Implant Materials and Infection Risk – Part 2 Surface Energies

One material property i occasionally hear about implants and infection risk is surface energy. This is usually mentioned in regard to silicone materials and their low sueface energy which may help them be more infection resistant. Not necessarily. Silicone’s low surface energy does not make ordinary medical-grade silicone inherently infection resistant. In many biologic environments, Read More…

Custom Facial Implant Materials and Infection Risk – Part 1. Bacterial Surface Adhesion

Reported rates of infection amongst the four materials used in custom facial implants, silicone, PEEK, porous polyethylene and titanium, is hard to define clinically, There are too few clinical studies and some of the materals have very low use in aesthetic facial augmentations (e.g., titanium) As a result laboratory evidence of the ability of bacteria Read More…

Correction of the Male Sloped Forehead by a Custom Extended Forehead Implant Case Example

A custom aesthetic forehead implant is a patient-specific implant designed from a CT scan to change the contour of the frontal bone with permanent volume..Fat grafting may work for modest soft-tissue contour changes, though volume retention can be unpredictable and repeat treatment may be needed. Injectable filler is sometimes proposed for small forehead changes, but Read More…

Eppley Custom Jawline Implant Design Protocol

I structure the custom jawline implant design process around one central principle: design toward a defined postoperative facial shape, not toward an implant thickness. The core concept is: implant geometry is the translation of an aesthetic goal into a safe, stable, anatomically blended 3D skeletal shape, with the largest augmentation where change is needed and Read More…

The Inverse-Design Method for Custom Jawline Implants

For a custom jawline implant, the best results usually come from treating the problem as an inverse-design problem: define the desired postoperative external jaw contour first, then work backward to determine the implant geometry needed to produce it. The key is not simply designing an implant that “looks good” on the mandible. As some implant Read More…

Custom Implant for Midface Advancement/Augmentation – The Three Zone Concept

For most implants whose goal is midface augmentation,their design and manufacture should be thought of as a three zone concept in which the anatomy/design relationship can be summarized as follows: Zone Anatomy Design purpose Surgical-planning issue 1 — Infraorbital / anterior maxilla Infraorbital rim and upper anterior maxilla Improve negative vector and upper-midface projection Infraorbital Read More…