Performing Revision Rhinoplasty
A revision rhinoplasty (aka: secondary rhinoplasty or tertiary rhinoplasty) is often requested by patients whose first nose job:
- Made the nose look no better or worse
- Caused breathing problems
- Looks overdone, unbalanced or unnatural
Estimates of revision rhinoplasties performed are all over the map, from 12 to 20 percent of first nose jobs. Many requests are made because a first rhinoplasty is often botched or overdone.
In any case, revision rhinoplasty patients must step up their search for a nose surgeon because the state of the nose has become now different. Usually, scar tissue exists inside the nose and the inner nose landscape may look different, with some missing or changed anatomy.
To cope, look for a revision rhinoplasty surgeon who performs the procedure weekly – if not daily – has a decade of experience and many (has in hundreds) revision rhinoplasty before and after pictures.
(Look at some revision rhinoplasty before and after pictures.)
So much experience and skill is necessary because the surgeon will be using cartilage or bone from other parts of your body. The first rhinoplasty may even have weakened the structure of the nose. In any case, doing a revision rhinoplasty often challenges the most skilled nose surgeons.
You must wait at least a year until the first nose job has healed. Use the time to find a surgeon with whom you communicate well and can give you a concrete idea what your revised nose job may look like after surgery.
Probably the best way is through computer imaging, also known as computer morphing.
(Read more about computer imaging.)
During the same surgical session to produce a more attractive nose, breathing problems caused by internal nasal structures can be repaired.
Most often a bent, or deviated septum blocks a breathing channel. Other important nasal structures –known as the turbinates – sitting farther up in the nose can swell due to allergies and restrict breathing.
That can also be rectified during rhinoplasty revision surgery.
(Read more about rhinoplasty revision.)
Some patients want narrowed nostrils at the same time. That’s surgically done by making incisions in the natural creases found on both sides of the nose where nostrils and cheeks meet. The resulting scars are hidden in natural skin folds.