Facial Shape
Noticing one side of your face in a photograph, or a jaw that reads soft, is usually a question about proportion.
Most people who look into facial shape are not asking for a different face. They are asking about one feature that reads wrong to them, usually in photographs. The first useful step is not a treatment but a description. Is this asymmetry, where the two sides differ, or proportion, where the parts are even but their relationship is what bothers you? The two are assessed differently, and a face can be noticeably uneven and still read as balanced. Asymmetry is the first of the two.
Asymmetry then divides again. Every face is uneven to some degree, and the question is whether yours sits inside the ordinary range or outside it. When it sits outside, the cause may be bone, muscle, fat, or the teeth and the bite, and each of those is addressed in a different way, or not at all. A jawline that looks weak is the same kind of question, because bone, fat and skin each produce that appearance, and what changes one does very little for another.
A profile raises questions the front view cannot answer, because the relationships that matter there are read on a true lateral view rather than from a photograph taken by a friend. One page in this group takes that view on its own. Another takes the evidence view of what proportion and symmetry can actually be measured and what a measurement cannot decide, and a further page deals with concerns that involve the skull or the bite, where planning happens in stages rather than in one sitting.
Understand the problem
What causes it, how it is assessed, what can be done.
Plan for your situation
What to do first, what can wait, what not to do.
What the evidence supports
Claims graded against what is actually known.
Background and service lines
The medical system behind the cluster.
Other ways into this cluster
Common questions
Frequently asked questions
Is a slightly uneven face normal?
Yes. Almost nobody is symmetrical, and small differences between the two sides are ordinary rather than a defect. The useful question is whether yours sits inside that range or outside it, and whether it has changed over time. Photographs taken with the same camera at the same distance are more informative than a mirror, because a mirror reverses the image and hides differences you have learned to ignore.
Can facial asymmetry be corrected?
It depends on the cause, and the cause decides everything. Soft tissue differences can often be balanced to some degree, while skeletal asymmetry may need a different kind of plan, and dental causes are corrected through the bite. Some asymmetries are best left alone, particularly when correction would trade a difference nobody notices for a scar or a change in how the face moves. That judgment comes from an examination.
What is facial balancing and is it a treatment?
It is a way of describing a face in terms of proportion and symmetry rather than a single procedure. The evidence pages examine what can be measured and what a measurement cannot decide, because proportion does not determine what someone should look like. Reading it is useful before a plan is proposed, since the phrase is sometimes used to describe a series of injections without saying what the series is meant to achieve.
Do bone or teeth need to be assessed before anything else?
When the concern is skeletal or dental, yes. Adding soft tissue over a jaw relationship that is the actual problem produces a face that looks fuller without looking more balanced. That is why bite history, dental treatment and the position of the underlying bone are part of the assessment for the lower face rather than an afterthought. Chongqing West District Hospital is a tertiary general hospital, and the craniofacial assessment draws on that setting.
Why do the front view and the profile get separate pages?
Because they answer different questions and are measured differently. The front view is about proportion and symmetry between the two sides. The profile is about the relationships from the forehead to the chin, and it is read on a true lateral view. A face can look balanced from the front and read quite differently from the side, and a plan that only considers one view misses half of the picture.
When should facial asymmetry be checked as a medical question?
When it is new, when it is progressing, or when it comes with pain, numbness, a change in your bite, difficulty closing an eye, or a one sided swelling. Those findings are assessed medically before any cosmetic discussion. Long standing asymmetry that has not changed is a different situation, and it is usually assessed in terms of what correction could achieve rather than what it might be hiding.
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