Remember last week’s post where I explained why most women don’t need cheek implants? I though it might be helpful to show you the flip-side of the coin – a situation where cheek implants really do help.
This 37-year-old was concerned mostly with her puffy lower eyelids and what she described as “non-existent cheeks.” Sure enough, her exam showed that she did have small cheekbones and, interestingly, it was her small cheekbones that caused the other problems.
The cheekbones are the floor that the lower eyelids sit on. When the cheekbones are prominent, the floor is sturdy and the eyes age slowly. But when the cheekbones are small, the lower lids have no floor to support them; they stretch and sag and drop much earlier in life. People with small cheekbones often come in to get their lower lids done as early as their 20′s. And it’s a mistake for a plastic surgeon to just fix the lower lids for these patients. That doesn’t correct the real problem so the results never look that great.
There’s another problem with small cheekbones. The cheekbones hold up the soft tissues of the cheeks and, when they’re small, the cheeks also sag early. That’s what happened here.
Knowing the anatomy of the problem made the solution clear:
- Build up the cheekbones with cheek implants. This balances the shape of the face and creates support for the lower lids and the cheeks.
- Lift the sagging cheeks with an Endotine midface lift.
The end result is a soft, natural fullness in the upper cheeks that tapers downward to the jaw. The shape of her face is prettier.
A couple of other points worth noting:
- Her lower lids look better even though I didn’t do any procedures on them. This is often a nice added benefit of the midface lift. Shifting the cheeks upward shortens the height of the lower lids and makes them look younger.
- I did put in a small chin implant to improve her jaw shape. But that’s a whole different subject for another post.
