Oftentimes, patients will point out a certain asymmetry in their nose after rhinoplasty or in their face after a facelift. For example, the person may say, ” doctor, my nostrils are a little bit different.” I then take out the ” before” pictures to point out that the asymmetry was always there. The patient’s reaction is almost always any eye opening surprise… “I never noticed that.”
But I don’t think it should be. And here is why….
Our bodies are not perfect to begin with and we are full of asymmetries. This is normal. And I know that ” we all know that,” it’s just we tend to think it’s other people that have these asymmetries, but not ourselves. Well, let me share my asymmetries…. my left pinky and index finger are smaller than its right counterpart, my right eyebrow is lower than the left, my left nostril is slightly larger than my right, my left ear is lower than my right. And these are just the ones I can see in the mirror.
So how does this pertain to rhinoplasty, blepharoplasty (cosmetic eye lid surgery), or facelifts? Well, the answer is that a person does not start out with a symmetric face. For this reason, it is not realistic to expect surgery to create a symmetric result. What you can expect after a rhinoplasty procedure is improvement of these symmetries. It is rare that an asymmetry can be completely corrected, but they can often be improved.