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Many people cluck their tongues about teen cosmetic nasal surgery, but under some circumstances, male patients younger than 16 and female patients under 14 go under the knife for corrective nasal surgery.
And guess what? Given competent hands, everything comes out fine!
Nasal surgery – like teen cosmetic rhinoplasty — is often criticized due to assumed vanity. But we suggest critics walk a few miles in the shoes of a high school student who is daily razzed, teased and called cruel names because of a misshapen nose.
Sixteen for males and 14 for females are the general guidelines for teens having a nose job because, in most cases, the nose has reach maturity.
Eelam Adil, M.D., plastic surgeon and associates at Boston’s Children’s Hospital wondered what the record would reveal about younger children who went under the knife for nasal deformities or could not breathe normally through their noses.
Writing in a current issue of JAMA’s Facial Plastic Surgery, a technical magazine for plastic surgeons, Dr. Adil and colleagues studied the medical records of 54 male and female nasal surgery patients under 16 and 14 from 1996 to 2012.
(Read the nasal surgery article.)
They found that 36 suffered from some nasal deformity after an accident while 48 had a severe blockage in the nasal airway, preventing healthy breathing.
The 36 patients suffering some traumatic event like a car wreck had their noses restored to look normal again. Is that not the equivalent of a cosmetic nose job?
(Look at some nose job before and after pictures.)
The 48 young patients with a breathing blockage all had an operation known as septoplasty, a procedure that removes a blocking septum from a breathing channel.
(Read more about septoplasty.)
The septum is the cartilage-bone dividing wall between the two nostrils.
Results? None of the patients had to undergo a revision surgery, when a previous surgery must be redone.
(Learn more about revision surgery.)
Concludes Dr. Adil: “Children with nasal obstruction and deformity can safely undergo nasal corrective surgery prior to adolescence.”
