Surgical · mandible
Jaw contouring surgery
Reshaping the angle and lower border of the jawbone. Reduction for an angle that flares too wide, augmentation for one that reads soft.
Not medical advice. This page explains what a procedure is and what is known about it. It is not a recommendation, and it says nothing about whether you are a candidate for anything. Only a licensed provider who has examined you can tell you that.
What it maps to in LooksRatio
- Gonial anglethe angle the jaw turns at, between the ramus and the body of the mandible
- Jaw-to-cheekbone widthhow wide the jaw sits relative to the cheekbones
What it is
A group of operations on the mandible itself, distinct from moving the whole jaw. The common versions are angle reduction (removing a curved section of the angle and lower border so a flared jaw narrows), outer cortex shaving (thinning the outer surface where width comes from bone thickness rather than flare), and angle augmentation with an implant where the angle is under-defined.
These are usually cosmetic. They do not change how the teeth meet, which is what separates them from orthognathic surgery.
How it works
The approach is normally intraoral, through incisions inside the mouth, so there is no external scar. The surgeon exposes the angle, then makes a curved ostectomy: a smooth cut following the intended new border. A straight cut is what produces the classic bad result, a second angle further forward that looks more artificial than what was there before.
Much of what reads as a wide lower face is not bone. The masseter muscle and the fat over it both contribute, and a careful assessment separates the three before anyone cuts anything.
Recovery
Swelling is substantial for the first week to ten days and takes six to eight weeks to mostly settle, with the final contour visible around three to six months. A soft diet is normal for the first weeks.
Risks and what actually goes wrong
Reported complication rates across published series run from about 3.5% to 11.1%. A ten-year retrospective review found 5.87%, with no serious events: the complications were hematoma, severe swelling, infection and one case of soft tissue sagging. A separate 519-patient series reported 4.0%, all minor.
Numbness of the lower lip from irritation of the inferior alveolar nerve is common and usually temporary, recovering over six to twelve months. Permanent facial nerve injury is rare in these series.
The characteristic aesthetic failure is soft tissue sagging: bone is removed, the soft tissue envelope that was draped over it is not, and it settles downward. Age and skin quality matter here.
Lower-commitment alternatives
If the width is muscular rather than bony, botulinum toxin into the masseter narrows the lower face over several weeks and wears off over months. It does nothing at all to bone.
Body composition moves this measurement more than people expect, because submental and facial fat blur the angle. That is the one lever here that costs nothing and carries no surgical risk.
What LooksRatio assumes
The projection moves the gonial angle 80% and jaw-to-cheekbone width 75% of the way to their ideals. It assumes bone is what is in the way. If the width is muscle or fat, the same numbers are reachable without an operating room.