Temporalis Tendon Transfer

The temporalis muscle lays over the side of the skull and attaches to the jaw to help close the mouth and clench your teeth together. We can provide movement to the corner of the mouth by detaching this muscle from the jaw and re-attaching it to the lip. The beauty of this procedure is it can be hidden either through an incision in a crease on the cheek or in the mouth. Once it has healed, the lips will be in better position and the corner of the mouth will move up with clenching (similar to a sile). We usually overcorrect the smile at first because over time this muscle relaxes to provide great symmetry. As one can imagine, clenching your teeth is how you would control the muscle and that means the patient needs retraining and rehabilitation to get the best outcome from surgery.