A skull reshaping surgery, also called cranioplasty, is a surgery designed to correct skull / cranium deformities. It is aimed at reshaping or correcting irregularities and/or imperfections of the skull. Those deformities can be congenital, meaning the patient is born with the cranial deformity, or could be acquired, meaning the skull anomaly due to a trauma, a surgery, an infection or other causes.
Congenital cranial deformities can be caused by non-syndromic craniosynostosis, syndromic craniosynostosis, severe positional plagiocephaly, encephaloceles, cutis aplasia, among others.
Acquired cranial deformities can be secondary to a brain or cranial surgery (such as cancer resections), severe skull trauma and fractures, infections or others.
There are various ways to perform a skull reconstruction surgery. You can perform an “augmentation” cranioplasty (to fill a defect for contouring) or a “reduction” cranioplasty (to trim down a bony protuberance for contouring).
Ultimately, the general approach for a cranioplasty must be customized for each patient based on three principle factors: (1) cause of cranial defect; (2) location, size, and geometry of defect; and (3) presence of complicating factors, including infection and radiation. The interplay among these factors determines the optimal strategy for a given clinical scenario.
To learn more about cranioplasty or how skull reshaping surgery may help you, please contact our Beverly Hills office by calling (310) 385-6090.
