Surgery
Custom Jaw & Chin Implants
CT-designed implants deliver changes nothing else can — at the cost of a permanent foreign body, with infection and revision rates that are not trivial.
Also called: custom implants · eppley implants · mandibular implant · wraparound implant
Verdict — mixed
Real in part — the claim outruns what it actually does.
Evidence grade C
Mechanistic plausibility, small studies, or observational data. Suggestive, not established.
Mechanism
Porous polyethylene or silicone implants, designed against the patient's own CT scan, are fixed to the mandible to augment the angle, ramus and border in a single planned shape.
Citations
- Complications of alloplastic facial implants: a review of 1,000 casesAesthetic Surgery Journal · 2015
- Bone resorption beneath silicone chin implants: long-term radiographic follow-upPlastic and Reconstructive Surgery · 2012
The full read
For a genuinely deficient mandible, custom implants are the most controllable way to add projection and width, and the planning process — designing against your own scan — is a real advance over off-the-shelf sizing. The honest counterweights: published infection rates for facial implants sit in the low single digits and mean removal when they occur, silicone chin implants have documented underlying bone resorption over years, nerve injury is a risk at the mental foramen, and a revision is a second operation into scarred tissue. A small number of surgeons do this work well and the outcome tracks that choice closely. Where the deficiency is skeletal and positional rather than volumetric, `genioplasty` or orthognathic surgery moves your own bone instead.