Prominent chin: how to treat an overly protruding chin?

The chin, which is under the jaw, is simply a bony protuberance. The chin is more or less prominent, depending on the person. Some people may have a small chin, while others may be too prominent.

A prominent chin, also named a protruding chin, is a chin protruding forward. It has a soft tissue or a mandibular bone prominence. This signature trait may often lead to a variety of difficulties, and in some situations, people with a prominent chin will have recourse to cosmetic surgery.

There is no medical cure for the protrusion of the chin, but surgery provides personalized treatments that allow the chin to be pushed back and produce excellent results.

Prominent chin: what are the causes of this?

In around 2% of cases, progenia is hereditary. Quite often, this is a family trait with a few members of the same family possessing a more advanced lower jaw. This was the case, for example, with the Habsburg dynasty, a family that had this particular characteristic.

In most cases, however, a protruding chin is caused by a functional problem. Indeed, this malformation can be associated with a lack of development of the upper jaw such that the jawbone, narrower than the mandible, prevents the growth of the chin. To compensate for this, the lower jaw begins to shift forward and the palate gradually atrophies.

Over the years, as a result, the chin continues to lean forward more and more, accentuating the malformation, hence the need to resort to cosmetic surgery to mitigate this issue, which can become a real health problem by impeding breathing in some cases.

Prominent chin: how can you fix it?

Some patients are no longer shy about resorting to cosmetic surgery to restore facial balance and push back the chin. In esthetic medicine, besides surgery, there is no way to fix a protruding chin. Genioplasty allows the chin to be pulled back in two separate ways:

• By drilling into the lower portion of the jawline.
• Through jaw fracture surgery: the excess bone is broken and added to the anterior portion of the chin in order to preserve facial harmony.

Genioplasty is the most appropriate procedure for prominent chins. The procedure to be used depends on the doctor, but also on the size of the protruding jaw.