Introduction: People who have flat or sunken foreheads give such a passive or dull impression that their image could be harmed due to the small physical defect. On the other hand, a broad and bright forehead makes a very affirmative image throughout the world. Considering this, people want to make better impression by making up for their defects. For this image improvement, we have performed the foreheadplasty with a variety of materials and methods. The operation in which both forehead augmentation using pyrost and face lift are performed shows an excellent effect, but the only shortcoming of this operation is the difficulty of reaching the operation site without bicoronal approach. A silicone sheet is used most popularly but it requires a lot of time and efforts to sculpture and has a high risk of complications such as postoperative hematoma or seroma. As the boundary line sometimes appears at the margin of augmented area, the operators had to pay a special attention. A recently highlighted method of forehead augmentation using Gore-Tex shows much improvement in terms of results or postoperative complications. However, as the cost of the operation becomes high, the forehead augmentation using silicone is still in general use. In order to get more natural and less complicated results, we performed forehead augmentation using methyl methacrylate, which has been widely used in reconstruction of skull defect by neurosurgeons for its hardness, relatively low incidence of foreign body reactions and easiness of formation.
Materials & Methods: Between June 1999 and March 2001, we have experienced 54 cases of forehead augmentation using methylmethacrylate. There were 1 male and 53 females, and their ages ranged from 17 to 48 years(mean 31.2 years).
Results: One Patient had seroma and three patients underwent reoperations because of their unsatisfaction.
Conclusion: Most patients were highly satisfied with forehead augmentation using methylmethacrylate. But the procedure required skillful and high technique of formation before the material becomes solid. It is a difficulty to remove the hardened methyl methacrylate. These problems should be solved for improvement with considerable study and research.