How Buccal Fat Removal Is Performed: The Incision Inside the Cheek, Step by Step

She is standing at the bathroom mirror, pressing two fingertips into the soft pocket below each cheekbone and letting go, watching the fullness bounce back. She has been doing this for weeks. Her question isn’t really whether she wants it. It’s what would actually happen if she said yes: where the cut goes, what the surgeon is reaching for, what she’d feel, and how long her face would look like it belonged to someone else.

Those are fair questions, and they deserve a clearer answer than a fifteen-second video. So this is the long version of how is buccal fat removal done, told the way a surgeon would explain it across a desk: the anatomy first, then the incision inside the cheek step by step, then the honest part about swelling, risks, and the people who are quietly advised to wait.

No promises about outcomes. Just what happens, in order, and what the evidence supports.

What is the buccal fat pad, and why does it sit where it does?

Start with the target. The buccal fat pad is a discrete lump of fat that sits deep in each cheek, in the space between the cheek muscles and the muscles you chew with. Anatomists sometimes call it Bichat’s fat pad after the French physician who described it. It is not the same as the fat just under the skin that softens with diet; it lives in a deeper compartment, wrapped in a thin capsule, and it changes little when body weight rises or falls.

Why is it there at all? Two jobs, mostly. In infants it helps the cheeks stay firm during sucking. In adults it acts as a gliding cushion, letting the chewing muscles slide past one another without friction. Surgeons have long borrowed slivers of it to patch holes in the roof of the mouth, which tells you how well-supplied with blood it is.

Its shape matters for the operation. The pad has a central body with several finger-like extensions, and the extension that bulges toward the cheek is the one people notice as roundness at the level of the mouth. That is the part a surgeon reaches for. The deeper extensions, tucked behind the jaw and up toward the temple, are usually left alone.

Two structures run close to it, and the whole procedure is choreographed around them. One is the parotid duct, the tube carrying saliva from the parotid gland in front of the ear to an opening inside the cheek near the upper molars. The other is the buccal branch of the facial nerve, which helps move the upper lip and corner of the mouth. Knowing exactly where those two lie is the difference between a routine 30-minute case and a complication that can follow someone for years.

How is buccal fat removal done? The whole procedure in plain language

Strip it to the essentials and the operation is surprisingly modest. You lie back in a procedure room or operating theatre. The inside of your mouth is cleaned with antiseptic. Numbing medicine is injected into the cheek lining, or you are sedated, or occasionally fully asleep if the fat removal is paired with a bigger operation. The surgeon then makes a short cut in the mucosa, the moist pink lining inside the cheek, roughly opposite the upper back teeth.

Through that opening, the surgeon spreads the thin cheek muscle, finds the glistening yellow fat pad beneath, and teases part of it out with gentle pressure from outside and a fine instrument from inside. The chosen amount is trimmed off. Bleeding points are sealed. The lining is closed with a few dissolvable stitches. The same sequence is repeated on the other side, with careful comparison so the two cheeks match.

Cleveland Clinic describes the whole thing as an outpatient procedure that typically takes around 30 minutes to an hour, after which most people go home the same day. There is no external incision, no drain, and usually no dressing beyond a soft gauze pad you may bite on for a while.

That is the sketch. The rest of this article slows each step down, because the details are where the questions live: how deep the cut goes, how the surgeon avoids the saliva duct, how anyone decides how much fat is enough, and what the cheek does over the following weeks. The point worth holding onto is that the surgical act is small. The judgment around it, about who should have it and how much to take, is not.

Who is buccal fat removal usually for, and who is asked to wait?

The person most likely to be offered this operation has a face that stays round in the lower cheek regardless of fitness, is at a stable adult weight, and has realistic expectations about a subtle change rather than a transformation. Cleveland Clinic frames the typical candidate as a healthy adult bothered by fullness in the cheeks that persists despite an otherwise lean build.

The list of people asked to pause is longer than newcomers expect. Anyone still in their late teens or early twenties is often counseled to wait, because facial fat naturally thins with age and a cheek that looks pleasantly full at 22 may look ideal at 32 without any surgery. Removing fat from a young face can bring forward the hollowed look of later decades, and unlike many cosmetic choices, this one cannot be reversed.

People with an already narrow or gaunt face are usually declined outright. Those planning significant weight loss are asked to reach a stable weight first, since the deeper buccal pad changes little but the overlying fat does, and the combined result is hard to predict mid-journey. Active smokers are often asked to stop well before surgery because smoking impairs healing of any wound, including one inside the mouth.

Medical reasons for delay include uncontrolled diabetes, bleeding disorders, use of medicines that thin the blood, poor dental health or gum infection near the incision site, and certain autoimmune conditions. None of these is an absolute wall, but each shifts the risk balance and belongs in a frank conversation.

The NHS makes a broader point about all cosmetic surgery that applies here: the decision should never be rushed, should follow a face-to-face consultation with a properly qualified surgeon, and should include a cooling-off period before you commit. The right time to have this operation, if there is one, is when you can describe the change you want in a sentence and accept that it is permanent.

What kind of anesthesia is used, and what will you actually feel?

Most people are surprised that this can be done while they are awake. Because the incision sits in the cheek lining and the fat is shallow, a surgeon can numb the whole working area with local anesthetic, the same category of medicine a dentist uses before a filling. Local anesthetic works by temporarily blocking the nerves that carry pain signals from the injection site, and its effect lasts a few hours before wearing off on its own.

What you feel under local alone is pressure and movement rather than pain: a firm push on the outside of the cheek, a tugging sensation as the fat is drawn forward, and the odd sound of instruments close to your ear. Some people find that unsettling, which is why many surgeons offer sedation alongside. Sedation is medicine given through a vein or by mouth that makes you drowsy and relaxed while you continue breathing on your own; you may remember very little afterward.

General anesthesia, where you are fully unconscious with a specialist monitoring your breathing, is less common for buccal fat removal on its own. It becomes the norm when the procedure is combined with something larger, such as a facelift, neck contouring or jaw surgery. Mayo Clinic notes that general anesthesia carries a small risk of nausea, sore throat and confusion afterward, and that people with certain lung, heart or sleep-apnea conditions face higher risk, which is why the anesthesia team will ask detailed questions beforehand.

Whichever route is chosen, you will be asked to avoid food and drink for a set period before surgery if sedation or general anesthesia is planned, to arrange for someone to take you home, and to list every medicine and supplement you take. That list matters more than people assume: several common supplements affect bleeding, and the anesthesia team decides what to hold and for how long, not the patient.

Step one: the incision inside the cheek

Picture the inside of your cheek as a soft wall. Run your tongue along it and you will feel a small bump near your upper second molar. That bump is the opening of the parotid duct, where saliva enters your mouth. The incision is placed a little below and behind that landmark, deliberately away from the duct, in a line that lies roughly opposite the upper molars.

The surgeon first pulls the cheek outward with a retractor, a smooth instrument that holds tissue aside, so the lining is stretched flat and well lit. A short cut is made with a scalpel or an electrosurgical tip, which uses a controlled electrical current to cut and seal small vessels at the same time. The incision is small, typically described as about a centimeter or so, just enough to admit an instrument and let the fat emerge; making it longer gains nothing and adds to stitching.

Beneath the lining lies the buccinator, the thin sheet of muscle that flattens your cheek against your teeth when you chew. Rather than cutting through it, the surgeon usually spreads its fibers apart with a blunt instrument, the way you might part a curtain. Blunt spreading matters because it moves nerves and vessels aside rather than dividing them.

Gentle pressure is then applied from outside, on the skin of the cheek below the cheekbone. That external push is doing real work: it drives the fat pad toward the opening so the surgeon does not have to dig for it. Bleeding at this stage is normally minimal, since the lining and muscle have a rich but small-caliber blood supply, and the anesthetic solution often contains a component that constricts vessels.

The whole incision step takes a minute or two. Its precision, especially the distance from the duct opening, is what prevents one of the most avoidable complications of this operation.

Step two: finding the fat pad and drawing it out

Once the muscle fibers part, something pale yellow and glistening usually appears on its own. That is the buccal extension of the fat pad, and its arrival is the moment the operation turns from anatomy to craft. The pad is enclosed in a thin capsule, and the surgeon opens that capsule with a fine instrument so the fat can be grasped.

What follows is a dance of two hands. One hand keeps steady pressure on the outside of the cheek, herding the fat toward the incision. The other uses a small forceps or clamp to take hold of the exposed fat and coax it forward with a slow, steady pull. Yanking is avoided. The fat is connected deeper to the rest of the pad by delicate strands carrying small vessels, and a sharp tug can tear those strands behind the field of view, where bleeding is harder to control.

This is also where the surgeon is watching for two things that should not be in the forceps. The buccal branch of the facial nerve runs across the outer surface of the pad, and the parotid duct crosses nearby. Both are recognizable to a trained eye by their color, texture and direction of travel, but the safest strategy is simply to stay in the correct plane and never grasp tissue that is not clearly fat.

The fat comes out with a soft, teardrop shape, usually in one or two pieces. Surgeons often set the removed tissue on a sterile drape beside the patient so the two sides can be compared directly, by eye and sometimes by weight, before anything is trimmed away. That side-by-side check is a low-tech but genuinely useful defense against asymmetry, since the two pads in the same person are not always identical to begin with.

How is buccal fat removal done safely? Deciding how much to take

Ask three experienced surgeons how much fat to remove and you will hear a version of the same answer: less than the patient asks for. The buccal pad is not a reservoir to be emptied. It is a structure that thins with age, so the cheek you sculpt at 30 will keep changing without you for the next 30 years.

In practice, most surgeons remove a conservative portion of the buccal extension, the part that actually produces the visible roundness, and leave the deeper body and the extensions near the temple and jaw untouched. Taking only the accessible fat that presents itself with gentle pressure, rather than chasing more with instruments, is a widely taught principle precisely because deeper dissection carries higher risk to the nerve and duct.

Once the surgeon has drawn out the intended amount, the fat is clamped at its base and cut free with scissors or an electrosurgical tip. The base is then sealed to prevent bleeding into the deep cheek space, where a collection of blood, known as a hematoma, would be hard to reach and slow to resolve. The remaining fat retracts back into its compartment.

Then the other side. The removed pieces are compared, and if one side has yielded noticeably more than the other, the surgeon may take a little more from the smaller side or accept a small difference if the faces themselves were asymmetric to begin with. Perfect symmetry does not exist in nature and is not the goal; a mismatch a patient will notice is.

One honest caveat belongs here. There is no validated formula that tells a surgeon how many grams to remove for a given face, and Cleveland Clinic notes that the eventual look depends partly on how the individual face ages. That uncertainty is a reason for restraint, not a reason for confidence.

Step three: closing up, and whether buccal fat removal scars show

Closure is quick. Before stitching, the surgeon inspects the small pocket for bleeding, irrigates it with sterile saline, and confirms nothing beyond fat has been disturbed. The muscle fibers that were spread apart fall back together on their own and generally need no suturing. The lining is then closed with a few absorbable stitches, the kind that dissolve over roughly one to two weeks and do not need removing.

People often ask about buccal fat removal scars, and the answer is reassuring for an unusual reason: the lining inside the mouth heals differently from skin. Oral mucosa has a fast turnover and a rich blood supply, and it tends to knit with minimal visible marking. Within weeks the incision line is usually hard to find even with a mirror and a flashlight. There is no incision on the face, so there is no external scar at all.

What can happen is a small, firm ridge along the incision for a few weeks as the tissue matures, or a spot that feels rough against the tongue. Those settle. Rarely, a stitch knot works loose early and a small gap opens; because saliva keeps the area moist and the mouth is bathed in the body’s own antibacterial defenses, small openings usually heal without intervention, but they should be shown to the surgical team rather than assumed harmless.

After closure, a soft gauze roll may be placed between the cheek and teeth to absorb a little oozing, and the outside of the face is checked once more for symmetry. You are then sat up, observed until any sedation has worn off, and given written instructions. Cleveland Clinic lists a soft diet and a prescribed mouth rinse among the usual early recommendations; the exact instructions come from your own surgical team and supersede anything general written here.

Buccal fat removal recovery time: what the first days and weeks look like

Nobody warns you about the chipmunk phase clearly enough. In the first two to three days, the cheeks swell noticeably, often looking fuller than before surgery. This is normal and, for many people, briefly alarming. Swelling is the body’s healing response to any incision; it has not undone the operation.

The following table gives typical ranges drawn from Cleveland Clinic’s patient guidance. Treat them as a sketch, not a schedule; individual healing varies, and your surgical team’s instructions take precedence.

Timeframe	What is commonly reported	What is usually advised
First 2-3 days	Peak swelling, tenderness, mild bruising, stiffness opening the mouth	Soft or liquid foods, gentle mouth rinsing, head elevated when resting
Days 4-7	Swelling begins to ease, stitches start dissolving	Gradual return to normal eating, avoid strenuous exercise
Weeks 2-3	Most visible swelling gone; cheeks may still feel firm inside	Return to usual activity as cleared by the team
Months 3-6	Residual deep swelling resolves; contour continues to refine	Follow-up review of symmetry and healing

Eating is the daily challenge. Chewing works the very muscle the surgeon parted, so lukewarm soups, yogurt, smoothies and soft grains are the sensible early menu. Very hot, crunchy or spicy food can irritate the incision. Some surgeons advise rinsing after every meal to keep food debris away from the healing line.

Discomfort is generally described as mild to moderate and manageable with pain relief chosen by the prescribing clinician; the kind, amount and duration are their decision based on your history. Numbness or tingling inside the cheek is common and usually fades over weeks as small sensory nerves recover.

The hardest part of buccal fat removal recovery time is psychological: the final result is not visible for months, and Cleveland Clinic notes that the full contour can take several months to emerge. The temptation to judge the outcome at week two, when the cheeks are still swollen, leads to needless worry and, occasionally, to ill-advised requests for revision.

How does it compare with other ways to slim the lower face?

Buccal fat removal is one tool, and it is aimed at one specific problem: fullness in the mid to lower cheek caused by the deep fat pad. When the roundness comes from somewhere else, a different approach fits better, and a good consultation is largely about working out which is which.

Fullness just under the skin, the kind that changes with weight, is not touched by this operation. General weight management addresses it; so, in some cases, do procedures that target subcutaneous fat. Fullness along the jawline and under the chin is a separate anatomical region, more often addressed by neck liposuction or, for some, by injectable treatments that break down fat cells, which act slowly over multiple sessions and have their own risk profile.

Then there is the fullness that is not fat at all. Enlarged masseter muscles, the powerful chewing muscles at the angle of the jaw, can give the lower face a square, heavy look, particularly in people who clench or grind their teeth. That is muscle, and removing buccal fat does nothing for it. Some clinicians use muscle-relaxing injections to soften the masseter; those are temporary and repeated, which is exactly the opposite trade-off from a permanent fat removal.

Non-surgical contouring with fillers works in reverse, adding volume to the cheekbones or jaw so the mid-cheek appears relatively less full by contrast. It is temporary and reversible, which some people see as a safety net and others as a drawback.

The NHS reminds people considering any cosmetic procedure to ask what will happen if it goes wrong and whether the practitioner is qualified to manage complications. That question sorts options quickly. A permanent surgical change demands a higher bar of certainty than a temporary one, and someone unsure whether their cheeks bother them enough may reasonably start with the reversible option, or with nothing at all.

Buccal fat removal risks: what can actually go wrong

Every honest surgeon frames this operation as low-risk but not no-risk, and the specific hazards are worth knowing by name. They fall into three groups: the ones common to any surgery, the ones tied to the neighborhood the fat pad lives in, and the one that only shows up years later.

General surgical risks come first. Bleeding into the cheek can form a hematoma, a firm, painful, expanding swelling that may need drainage. Infection is possible because the mouth is not a sterile field; MedlinePlus lists redness, spreading warmth, pus and fever among signs of a surgical site infection, and inside the mouth the clues include a foul taste, worsening pain after the first few days, and swelling that grows instead of shrinking. Reactions to anesthesia range from nausea to, rarely, serious allergic responses.

Neighborhood risks are specific to this procedure. Injury to the parotid duct can cause saliva to leak into the cheek tissue, producing a soft swelling that fills at mealtimes, or lead to scarring that blocks the duct. Injury to the buccal branch of the facial nerve can weaken movement of the upper lip or corner of the mouth; this is usually temporary if the nerve is bruised rather than cut, but recovery can take months. Numbness of the inner cheek is common and mostly transient. Asymmetry, where one side ends up visibly less full than the other, is among the more frequent reasons people seek a second opinion. Difficulty opening the mouth fully, called trismus, occasionally follows swelling around the chewing muscles and typically eases as swelling does.

The late risk is the one Cleveland Clinic and most surgeons emphasize: over-resection. Because facial fat thins naturally with age, cheeks that look sharply defined at 30 may look hollow and tired at 50. Fat can be added back with grafting, but that is a second operation with imperfect predictability. Restraint at the first operation is the only reliable protection.

What people often get wrong about buccal fat removal

The first myth is that it is a weight-loss procedure or a way to get a slimmer face overall. The buccal pad is a walnut-sized deep structure, not the layer that softens with diet, and removing part of it changes one specific zone below the cheekbone. Someone hoping for a leaner jawline or a smaller-looking face from ear to ear will be disappointed, and an ethical consultation will say so.

The second is that the result is visible immediately. It is the opposite: the cheeks are fuller for days, still puffy for weeks, and Cleveland Clinic notes that the final contour can take several months to settle. Judging the outcome early is the most common source of regret and of unnecessary anxiety.

The third is that it produces visible cheekbones. Cheekbones are bone. Removing fat beneath them can make existing bone structure more apparent by contrast, but it cannot create prominence that isn’t there. People with flatter midfaces sometimes end up looking gaunt rather than sculpted, which is one reason surgeons examine the whole face before agreeing to operate.

The fourth is that it can be undone. It cannot. Fat grafting can add volume back, but it is a separate operation with variable survival of the transferred fat, and the result rarely matches the original anatomy exactly.

The fifth is that swelling equals a bad result. Early asymmetry is nearly universal because the two cheeks swell at different rates. True asymmetry cannot be assessed until the deep swelling has resolved.

A sixth deserves mention: that the operation is trivial because the incision is tiny. The cut is small; the structures beside it are not trivial. The NHS advises checking that anyone performing cosmetic surgery is a registered surgeon with relevant training and insurance, and that advice applies with full force to a procedure often marketed as a minor add-on.

Questions to ask your care team before you decide

Good consultations feel like interviews in both directions. You are assessing the surgeon as much as being assessed, and a few well-aimed questions will tell you more than any gallery of photographs. Bring them written down; people forget under the lights.

• Looking at my face specifically, is the fullness I dislike coming from the buccal fat pad, from fat under the skin, from muscle, or from bone structure? How can you tell?
• Given my age and how faces typically thin over time, do you think I should have this now, wait, or not have it at all?
• How much fat do you plan to remove on each side, and how do you decide when to stop?
• What anesthesia do you recommend for me, who will administer it, and how will I be monitored?
• How do you protect the parotid duct and the facial nerve during the operation?
• What complications have you personally managed after this procedure, and what would we do if one happened to me?
• What does a normal recovery look like week by week, and at what point should I stop worrying about swelling and asymmetry?
• If I am unhappy with the result after full healing, what are the realistic options, and what are their limits?
• Who do I call at night or on a weekend if something changes suddenly?
• Are you a registered surgeon with specific training in facial procedures, and is this operation covered by your insurance?

Listen as much to how questions are answered as to the content. A surgeon who welcomes the age question, volunteers the risk of over-resection without prompting, and is comfortable saying “I would advise against it for you” is behaving the way the NHS guidance on choosing a cosmetic practitioner describes: putting the decision, and the cooling-off period, ahead of the booking.

Bring someone with you if you can. A second pair of ears catches what nerves filter out.

When to call your doctor

Most recoveries are uneventful, and the daily rhythm is simply soft food, gentle rinsing and patience. A small number of signs, though, should prompt a same-day call to your surgical team, and a few warrant emergency care without waiting for a callback.

Contact your surgeon the same day if swelling on one side grows rapidly or becomes hard and very painful, which can signal a hematoma; if pain worsens after the third day instead of easing; if you notice a foul taste, pus, or increasing redness at the incision; if you develop a fever; if a soft swelling in the cheek fills up when you eat, which can indicate saliva leaking from an injured duct; or if you cannot move the corner of your mouth or upper lip normally once the numbing has fully worn off. MedlinePlus notes that fever, spreading redness and drainage are core signs of a surgical wound infection that need prompt assessment.

Seek emergency care immediately if you have bleeding from the mouth that soaks gauze repeatedly and does not slow with firm pressure, swelling that makes it hard to breathe or swallow, chest pain or shortness of breath, a widespread rash or facial and throat swelling suggesting an allergic reaction, or a high fever with chills and confusion.

Less urgent but still worth a message: an incision that has opened, a stitch you can feel dangling, persistent numbness beyond several weeks, or difficulty opening your mouth that is not improving as swelling falls.

One principle covers all of it. You are not expected to diagnose yourself, and your surgical team would far rather hear about something that turns out to be normal than miss something that is not. Keep their after-hours number where you can find it, follow their written instructions over anything general you read, and let them make the call on what needs to be seen.

Frequently asked questions

How is buccal fat removal done without leaving a scar on the face?

The entire operation happens through a short incision in the lining inside the cheek, so no cut is made on the skin. Oral mucosa heals quickly and with minimal marking because of its rich blood supply and fast cell turnover. Within a few weeks the incision line is usually difficult to find even when you look for it, and the stitches used are the dissolvable kind that disappear on their own.

Is buccal fat removal painful during the procedure?

Under local anesthetic you feel pressure, tugging and movement rather than sharp pain, similar to dental work. Many surgeons add sedation so you are drowsy and remember little. General anesthesia is usually reserved for cases combined with larger operations. Afterward, discomfort is commonly described as mild to moderate and is managed with pain relief chosen by your prescribing clinician based on your medical history.

What is the typical buccal fat removal recovery time?

Cleveland Clinic describes peak swelling in the first few days, most visible swelling easing over two to three weeks, and the final contour taking several months to settle. Many people resume light daily routines within about a week once cleared by their team, while strenuous exercise and hard or hot foods are usually held back longer. Individual healing varies and your surgeon’s instructions take precedence.

What are the main buccal fat removal risks?

The most discussed risks are bleeding that forms a hematoma, infection, asymmetry between the two cheeks, temporary numbness, injury to the parotid duct causing saliva to leak into the cheek, and injury to the buccal branch of the facial nerve affecting lip movement. The long-term risk is over-resection, where cheeks look hollow as facial fat naturally thins with age. Serious complications are uncommon but real.

What is the buccal fat pad exactly?

It is a discrete lump of fat wrapped in a thin capsule, sitting deep in each cheek between the chewing muscles and the cheek muscle. It cushions muscle movement during chewing and helps infants suck. Unlike fat under the skin, it changes little with weight loss or gain. Only its front extension, the part that creates visible roundness below the cheekbone, is usually targeted in surgery.

Will buccal fat removal scars be visible inside my mouth long term?

Usually not in any noticeable way. The incision inside the cheek typically matures into a faint line that is hard to see and rarely felt. For a few weeks you may notice a small firm ridge or rough spot against your tongue, which settles as tissue heals. If a stitch loosens early or the line stays sore or open, show it to your surgical team rather than assuming it is fine.

Why do surgeons tell younger people to wait?

Facial fat naturally decreases with age, so fullness that bothers someone at 20 often softens on its own by their thirties. Removing deep cheek fat early can bring forward a gaunt appearance decades later, and the change is permanent. Most surgeons therefore prefer to operate on adults whose facial shape and body weight have stabilized and who understand the long-term trade-off.

Can buccal fat removal be reversed if I don't like the result?

No, the removed fat does not grow back. Volume can be added later with fat grafting, which transfers fat from elsewhere in the body, but that is a separate operation and the transferred fat survives unpredictably, so it rarely recreates the original contour exactly. This is the central reason surgeons emphasize removing a conservative amount and encourage a cooling-off period before committing.

How much fat is removed during buccal fat removal?

There is no validated formula, and amounts vary with each person’s anatomy and goals. Most surgeons remove only the portion of the fat pad that presents itself easily through the incision with gentle external pressure, leaving the deeper body untouched to avoid the nerve and duct and to preserve volume for later life. The two sides are compared directly during surgery to limit asymmetry.

Does buccal fat removal make cheekbones more prominent?

It can make existing cheekbone structure more noticeable by reducing the fullness beneath it, but it cannot create bone prominence that isn’t there. People with flatter midfaces sometimes look hollow rather than sculpted after the procedure, which is why surgeons assess the whole face, including bone structure and skin thickness, before agreeing that this operation is likely to suit someone.

References

• NHS: Cosmetic procedures
• MedlinePlus: Surgical wound infection – treatment
• MedlinePlus: Plastic and Cosmetic Surgery

This article is for general information only and is not a substitute for professional medical advice. Please consult a qualified doctor about your individual situation.