There are many times when I get people that come to my office wondering about changing the appearance of a chin implant that they had before. I have this case of a woman who had a chin implant by another surgeon and she felt that the chin implant was riding too high. She felt that the chin implant was also too large and it made her look a little masculine. When it comes to revisions, you should not ever just take an implant out unless it is a really small implant. What happens is that the soft tissue can ball up and contract and create an unfavorable appearance. What is typically the better thing to do is to replace the large implant with a smaller one. If the implant is already smaller, then you could make a case to not put any implant in and this is an option only for a small implant. Generally small implants are the ones that people have an issue with. Also when you put an implant in, they implant should alwaws ride on the inferior border of the mandible where the bone is hard and less likely to undergo resorption. I prefer medpor implants for many reasons. They can get incorporated and vascularized to act like your own tissue much more so than silicone implants. Silicone implants tend to have a capsule form around it and will not get incorporated. Hence, when you hit your silicone implant there is more likely the chance for complications years after the procedure as opposed to medpor where once it gets incoporated past 12 weeks, it will be more resistant to infection and rejection. Here is a video showing and demonstrating what we are talking about.
Thanks for reading, Dr Young
Dr Young specializes in Facial Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery and is located in Bellevue near Seattle, Washington