View before and after photos of Jowl Liposuction patients who have been treated by best plastic surgeons. Liposuction of jowls can be effective in young patients with tight skin. However jowls often mean that deep tissues have sagged, skin has loosened, and patients are best served with a facelift.
Modern facelifts performed by top doctors adjust up deep tissues, tighten skin and are minimally detectable or non-detectable. Make sure you don’t make the problem worse by subtracting from jowl tissue via liposuction, only to find that this valuable tissue could have been adjusted upwards via a facelift to fill in lost volume above.
If liposuction is done for the wrong reason, things will look good for a few months while subtle swelling is present, only to look looser afterwards. (Brent Moelleken, MD, Beverly Hills Plastic Surgeon)
Some jowls are paper thin without fat and they won’t respond well with liposuction. Some might be too thin and irregularities could occur.
Other thicker jowls may respond well with careful liposuction. There is a small risk of temporary, and more rare, a permanent loss of nerve loss in that area which can affect the lowering of the lower side of the lip and chin. (Ronald Shelton, MD, Manhattan Dermatologic Surgeon)
Jowl liposuction works
Any fat contouring in the face and neck can be done with liposuction. Make sure you are careful as to who performs such a procedure because if it is done incorrectly the correction can be difficult.
Not all faces should be liposuctioned so make sure you have a consultation with an appropriately trained surgeon. (Marcus L. Peterson, MD, Saint George Plastic Surgeon)
While jowls that contain fat can technically be liposuctioned, the reason jowls are present are not only related to fat. A careful diagnosis is necessary to determine the anatomy of this area. Sometimes it is related to loose or excessive facial skin.
Sometimes it is fat. Sometimes is it due to or aggravated by the bony skeleton of your chin or mandible. The treatment should target the etiology. (Robin T.W. Yuan, MD, Beverly Hills Plastic Surgeon)
Jowls often do very good with liposuction alone
Jowls turn out very good with liposuction by an expert in the micro canula technique under local anesthesia for roughly $1500-2500. You can drive yourself home and back to work the next day. (David Hansen, MD, Beverly Hills Dermatologic Surgeon)
Jowls can be liposuctioned but the surgeons must exercise extreme caution using extremely precise techniques and/or fine cannulas to minimize the potential for visible skin irregularities due to liposuctioning too close to the skin surface. (Otto Joseph Placik, MD, Chicago Plastic Surgeon)
Liposuction as a technique works well to remove fat from regions that have good skin tone. If you have elastic “snappy” skin, then getting rid of fat from below the surface will result in a nice contour.
The jowls occur with aging because the face has lost elasticity and has started to “descend” – retaining ligaments affix the skin in certain regions, and thus create the marionette line creases with the jowls behind.
So once you have jowls, it means you have poor elasticity. If you attempt to directly address the jowl by removing the fat, the overlying skin is even more deflated, and you are running the risks of seeing contour irregularities.
Some surgeons feel they can get a good result from lipo in this region, but I consider it risky – you are more likely to get a good / smooth result with a face lift. This has the additional benefit of resetting the skin tone, redefining the neck line and jaw line, as well as enhancing the cheek region. (Michael A. Bogdan, MD, FACS, Dallas Plastic Surgeon)
Liposuction of the Jowl Region
It’s important to exercise extreme caution when performing liposuction of the jowl region. In this area the marginal mandibular nerve lies in a superficial location where it can be easily injured. Injury of this nerve can have significant consequences including distortion of the lips when patients smile.
Although injuries to the marginal mandibular nerve are uncommon they do occasionally occur. The vast majority of these injuries result from the nerve being stretched and tend to resolve with time. In rare cases injuries may be permanent.
For this reason it’s important to consult a board certified plastic surgeon who understands the anatomy in this area. Under these circumstances the procedure can be performed safely. (Richard J. Bruneteau, MD, Omaha Plastic Surgeon)
It is very rare to get nerve loss from liposuction of the jowls, since the nerve is deep to the muscle and there is no fat in that area. The best treatment for jowls is not liposuction, it is re-suspending the jowls back up into the buccal space where they descended down from with either a mini lift or a face lift.
Liposuction of the jowls can leave irregularities and undulations in that area, so we do not perform that procedure (William Portuese, MD, Seattle Facial Plastic Surgeon)