Rhinoplasty: The Sequel

How do I know if I should have a secondary rhinoplasty surgery?

Are you considering a follow-up nose job or revision rhinoplasty surgery and wondering what the pros and cons are? Approximately 15 percent of initial nose jobs require revisions for a variety of reasons. Most of these have to do with either correcting something that was not adequately addressed the first time or making additional changes. How you approach deciding on a follow-up procedure will be much like making the decision for the initial one.While many surgeries are done for functional purposes, like correcting structural issues that are interfering with breathing, the reason for the majority of nose jobs, today, is appearance. There is something about the size or shape of the nose that the client wants changed. Once the swelling has begun to subside following surgery, it should be fairly obvious whether functional issues were taken care of or not. Most of the time they are, but every procedure is different and there is always the possibility that something shifted or even that a new issue was created in the process. Opting for follow-up surgeries in these cases are not difficult choices to make.When the initial procedure was to create a new look for the nose, satisfaction with the outcome is an entirely different matter. Even though experienced surgeons will have spent a considerable amount of time meeting with the patient, answering questions and detailing what to expect, the patient may still have had unrealistic expectations. It then becomes necessary for the surgeon to, once again, clearly present what can and cannot be expected from a secondary surgery.

Multiple Revision Nose Jobs

The patient with inflated expectations will, eventually, accept and, in many cases, come to appreciate the results. There is another category of client, however, who may never get there. When we talk about multiple nose jobs, it’s nearly impossible to do so without the image of Michael Jackson coming to mind. Such a talented and, at the same time, tragic individual. He had his first cosmetic surgery, rhinoplasty, at age 20 and, by some estimates, by the time he died 30 years later, he had had somewhere in the unbelievable range of 100 procedures. Many were to repair and try to salvage his nose but there were also far too many for the purpose of trying to find a perfect result that was possible only in his mind.Michael Jackson was, of course, the extreme. There are many people, though, famous and not, who are looking for an idealized image. There is nothing wrong with wanting to improve your appearance, but sometimes the motivation is such that it cannot be achieved. The decision for secondary and multiple revision surgeries is probably not the best choice in this case.For those times when revision rhinoplasty is called for, you could not make a better decision than to request a consultation with Dr. Geoffrey Tobias, a revision rhinoplasty specialist. To request a consultation, simply call 347-830-7065 or click here.