Reshaping of the Cheekbone Areas

A thinning of the face as a result of the passing of time is highly visible in the cheekbone areas. Loss of volume in this area affects the facial features and gives a look of sadness to the face. It is accoompanied very often by facial sagging.
There are 3 good techniques for rebuilding the cheekbone areas:

• Lipofilling or lipostructure®
• Filling using a synthetic product
• Implanting support threads.

LIPOFILLING OR LIPOSTRUCTURE®

This technique is also reserved for surgeons, and is therefore not performed by this medical practice.
Fatty tissue is taken from parts of the body of the patient with fatty deposits and is reimplanted in the cheekbone area (or other parts of the face).
It therefore consists of a self-grafting procedure, involving a small volume in this specific case (10 to 30 cc), and has many advantages:

• Grafted fatty tissue tolerated perfectly
• Significant reserves of graft tissue allowing multiple grafts
• Low cost of the graft material itself.

The areas most frequently involved are the cheekbone areas, but also the nasogenian folds, the cheeks, and the temples. In practice, fatty tissue is taken, without subjecting it to trauma, via a minor lipoaspiration procedure with a syringe, under local anaesthetic, taken over a wide area of the body, from parts of the body conducive to this procedure. The fat is purified using simple centrifugation and is reinjected into areas of the face that have been drawn beforehand with great precision. Several sessions are needed (2 or 3 at intervals of 6 to 12 months) in order to give suitable and long-lasting results, causing slight social inconvenience due to bruising or temporary excess volume.

FILLING USING SYNTHETIC PRODUCTS

Various products of varying persistance can be used and several injections are required at 1-month intervals in order to achieve a life span of 6 to 18 months, and possibly much longer.
Deep-down, hyaluronic acid (SUB-Q®) can be injected on a temporary basis, or polyacrylamide gel (AQUAMID® and BIO ALCAMID®) can be injected for long-term results.

SUPPORT THREADS

Support threads allow the cheekbone areas to be lifted by counteracting the sagging and distension of the skin. They are often used in combination with a filling procedure for reshaping, since sagging and loss of volume are two different but concomitant phenomena.

CONCLUSION

These techniques allow significant work of a substantial nature to be done in order to lift the features and to restore volume to the face. The ability of the face to resist tiredness is significantly improved, and it is the most consistently requested procedure by patients.