Aesthetic improvements in mid-lower face skeletal surgery

Current surgical techniques allow to correct congenital and acquired facial deformities as well as aesthetic deficiencies resulting from inadequate bone support with excellent functional and aesthetic results. Hard and overlying soft tissue being in a closer anatomic relationship, remarkable aesthetic improvements can be achieved through the three-dimensional shifting of skeletal sections. Hence, facial aesthetic plays such an increasingly critical role in the repair surgery of basal deformities and in the surgical correction of poor aesthetics associated with growth abnormalities as to possibly trespass plastic surgeons' scope of activity. After setting forth our diagnostic and therapeutic guidelines through some relevant clinical cases, the increasingly closer relation between aesthetics enhancement and purely functional surgery of facial muscular and bone structures will be emphasized. Finally, some of the possible treatments currently available will be outlined.