The buccal fat pad is a rounded mass of fat in the middle of your cheek. It’s located between facial muscles, in the hollow area beneath your cheekbone. The size of your buccal fat pads affects your face shape.
Everyone has buccal fat pads. However, the size of buccal fat pads can vary greatly.
If you have larger buccal fat pads, you might feel like your face is too round or full. You may also feel like you have a “baby face.”
There’s nothing wrong with having bigger cheeks. But if you’d like to make them smaller, a plastic surgeon might recommend buccal fat removal. This surgery is done to reduce the width of round faces.
Buccal fat removal is a type of plastic surgery. It’s also known as a buccal lipectomy or cheek reduction surgery.
During the procedure, the buccal fat pads in your cheeks are surgically removed. This thins the cheeks and defines facial angles.
The surgery can be done alone or with another form of plastic surgery, such as:
- facelift
- rhinoplasty
- chin implants
- lip augmentation
- Botox injection