Do you wish you had dimples? I always did growing up! Who would’ve thought that a birth defect (technically) could look so attractive? Nowadays with all the crazy things that celebrities and patients request from their plastic surgeon, I guess it should come as no surprise that you can actually have surgery to create dimples.
What causes a dimple?
Dimples are naturally caused by a birth defect whereby a “kink” in your buccinator muscle causes the overlying skin to stick to the underlying connective tissue. The dimples that appear on a person’s face are usually in the buccinator (cheek) muscle. That’s why facial expressions such as smiling cause the dimples to appear.
How do you “make” a dimple?
A dimpleplasty is a minimally invasive procedure that is performed under local anesthesia. This means that instead of putting the patient to sleep in the operating room, the surgeon can perform the surgery in the exam room in about 15-20 minutes!
First, the surgeon makes an incision inside of your cheek. This means that there are no visible scars on your face. Then, the surgeon creates a “hole” in the muscle and uses an absorbable suture to tether the undersurface of the skin to the surrounding tissue that mimics the “kink” described above. And even after suture absorption, the scarring between the underlying skin and muscle will continue to create the appearance of dimples.
Immediately after surgery, the dimple is visible even without smiling. But after a few days, the dimple only appears when smiling, just like the natural ones.
Contact the San Francisco practice of Dr. Jonathan Kaplan today at (415) 923-3005 for more information about dimpleplasty.
