Buccal Fat Removal with Chin Lipo and Rhinoplasty

Patient Overview

• Patient: Fikriye

• Age: 31 years old

• Gender: Female

• Procedures: Buccal fat removal, chin liposuction, rhinoplasty

• After photos taken at: 10 months post-surgery

• Location: Istanbul, Turkey

Three Procedures, One Facial Transformation

Facial aesthetics are never about a single feature in isolation. The cheeks relate to the jawline. The jawline relates to the chin. The chin relates to the nose. When a patient wants a slimmer, more defined face, addressing only one of these areas while ignoring the others produces an incomplete result — like framing one wall of a room while leaving the others untouched. Fikriye's surgical plan recognised this interconnection from the start, combining buccal fat removal, chin liposuction, and rhinoplasty in a single session to reshape her facial contour from every angle simultaneously.

At thirty-one, Fikriye consulted Dr. Cem Berkay Sinaci, a European board-certified plastic surgeon (FEBOPRAS) and member of ISAPS and ASPS, with a goal that many patients share but struggle to articulate: she wanted her face to look narrower, more sculpted, and more defined. Dr. Sinaci's assessment identified three specific anatomical contributors to the roundness she wanted to change — and designed a combined approach that addressed all three in one operation and one recovery.

Buccal Fat Removal: Sculpting the Mid-Face

The buccal fat pad is a distinct, encapsulated mass of fat that sits deep within each cheek, between the buccinator muscle and the masseter. Unlike subcutaneous fat that can fluctuate with weight changes, buccal fat is a structural deposit that remains relatively constant regardless of diet or exercise. In patients with prominent buccal fat pads, the lower cheeks appear round and full even at a healthy or lean body weight — the characteristic "baby face" or "chipmunk cheek" appearance that no amount of weight loss will resolve.

Buccal fat removal is performed through a small incision inside the mouth, on the inner surface of the cheek. The fat pad is identified, gently teased from its capsule, and excised. There are no external incisions and no visible scars. The procedure takes approximately twenty to thirty minutes per side and produces a slimming effect in the lower mid-face that becomes increasingly apparent as post-operative swelling resolves over the following weeks and months.

For Fikriye, buccal fat removal narrowed the widest portion of her lower face, creating the cheekbone-to-jaw transition that defines a sculpted facial contour. The cheekbones, which were always present but visually obscured by the fullness below them, now stand out as the widest point of the mid-face — the V-shape silhouette that is universally associated with a defined, youthful facial structure.

Chin Liposuction: Defining the Lower Frame

While buccal fat removal addresses the cheeks, the jawline and chin require their own intervention to complete the facial slimming effect. Submental fullness — excess fat beneath the chin and along the jawline — softens the angle between the jaw and the neck, creating a rounded lower facial contour that works against the definition achieved in the cheeks.

Chin liposuction removes this submental fat through one or two tiny puncture incisions beneath the chin, each only a few millimetres in size. A fine cannula is introduced through these access points and the excess fat is suctioned away, revealing the jawline anatomy that was hidden beneath the adipose layer. The result is a sharper cervicomental angle — the transition from jaw to neck — and a more defined chin projection that anchors the lower face.

For Fikriye, the chin liposuction complemented the buccal fat removal by extending the slimming effect from the cheeks downward through the jawline. The two procedures together created a continuous line of definition from the cheekbones through the jaw to the chin — a complete lower facial contour that neither procedure alone could achieve.

Rhinoplasty: The Central Element

Adding rhinoplasty to a facial slimming combination may seem unrelated to cheek and chin contouring, but the nose occupies the geometric centre of the face and influences how every surrounding structure is perceived. A nose that is wide, over-projected, or disproportionate to the surrounding facial features can undermine the refinement achieved by buccal fat removal and chin liposuction. Conversely, a nose that is harmoniously proportioned amplifies the slimming effect by contributing a sense of central facial definition that radiates outward.

Fikriye's rhinoplasty was designed to complement her facial contouring goals — refining the nasal profile, adjusting projection, and narrowing the nasal width to harmonise with her newly sculpted cheeks and jawline. The nose was not treated as a separate concern but as an integral component of the overall facial proportion that all three procedures were collectively reshaping.

Dr. Sinaci's approach to combined facial procedures treats the face as a unified aesthetic composition. Each intervention is planned not in isolation but in relation to the others, ensuring that the changes in one area enhance rather than conflict with the changes in adjacent areas. This integrated planning, refined through his fellowship with the internationally renowned plastic surgeon Raul Gonzalez in Brazil and cadaver training in Bangkok, produces results where no single procedure dominates — the face simply looks better as a whole.

Why Ten Months Shows the True Result

Fikriye's ten-month photographs capture the definitive outcome of all three procedures. This timeline is significant because each procedure reaches its final result on a different biological schedule, and ten months is the point at which all three have fully matured.

Buccal fat removal produces its most dramatic visible change between months two and six. The immediate post-operative swelling — which temporarily makes the cheeks appear fuller, paradoxically — resolves gradually, and the true slimming effect emerges progressively as the tissue settles into its new contour. By ten months, the mid-face volume reduction is complete and stable.

Chin liposuction results are largely visible by three months, with the final skin retraction and tissue settling completed by six months. At ten months, the jawline definition represents its permanent state — the fat that was removed will not return, and the skin has fully contracted around the reduced submental volume.

Rhinoplasty is the slowest of the three to reach its final form. Nasal swelling — particularly in the tip — can persist in subtle degrees for up to twelve months or longer. At ten months, the vast majority of this swelling has resolved, and the nasal shape is very close to its permanent configuration with only minimal further refinement expected.

The convergence of all three procedures at their near-final state makes ten months the ideal time to evaluate the complete facial transformation. Fikriye's photographs show a face that is measurably narrower, more angular, and more defined than her preoperative appearance — and every element of that change is permanent.

The Single-Session Advantage

Combining buccal fat removal, chin liposuction, and rhinoplasty in one operative session offers practical advantages that extend beyond convenience. A single anaesthetic exposure rather than three. One recovery period rather than three separate downtime intervals. And perhaps most importantly, the ability to calibrate all three procedures against each other in real time during surgery — adjusting the degree of buccal fat removal based on how the chin liposuction has changed the jawline, and refining the nasal dimensions based on the emerging facial contour.

This intraoperative calibration is only possible when the procedures are performed together. Staged surgery — addressing one area, waiting months, then addressing the next — forces the surgeon to predict how future procedures will interact with the current result. Simultaneous surgery allows the surgeon to see and respond to those interactions as they develop.

Facial Contouring in Istanbul

Fikriye's ten-month before and after result demonstrates what comprehensive facial contouring achieves when three complementary procedures are planned and executed as a single, integrated intervention. Buccal fat removal slims the cheeks, chin liposuction defines the jawline, and rhinoplasty refines the central feature that ties the entire composition together. For patients seeking facial slimming surgery in Istanbul, her case illustrates that the most natural and harmonious results come not from addressing one concern at a time but from treating the face as the interconnected structure it is.