Bone Erosion Associated with Silastic Chin Implant

For most of us facial surgeons, placement of a chin implant is an extremely gratifying procedure. Chin implants can greatly improve facial harmony and they will truly benefit  the patient for decades to come.

Having said this, every surgical procedures comes with risks. Personally, I do not consider bone erosion a risk after chin implant. It rather demonstrates the dynamics of our bones over time. The chin becomes less projecting with time anyway, mainly due to soft tissue changes. The overall benefit from a chin implant will persist even if there is some bone erosion. Therefore, bone absorption after silastic chin implants represents an issue of a rather academic interest; but it is still your face after all. Some patients ask me if we should choose a larger size chin implant to overcome a possible absorption of bone. I do not think that this is a good idea.

While some chin implant procedures do tend to cause a small amount of bone erosion, the amount of erosion is usually only a few millimeters over time. The implant can always be removed later in life if so desired. It will not really affect the long term results.

Although reported at low incidence in the literature, I have not found this to be a problem (ever) in over 15 years of performing Chin Implant surgeries with Silastic. I would not be concerned with it. Dr. G.