Nose reshaping surgery, or rhinoplasty, is performed on hundreds of thousands of patients every year. But did you know that one in five of those patients decide to have rhinoplasty for a second or even a third time? It might be surprising, considering everything that goes into having the surgery even once. So what is it that makes 20% of rhinoplasty patients go under the knife again? The most common reason is that the patient is unhappy with how their nose looks once it has healed from the original surgery, but there are a few other possible reasons behind the decision for revision rhinoplasty.
New Trauma
Noses are always fragile and more vulnerable to injury than other areas of the face because they have very thin pieces of cartilage. That fragility doesn’t change after rhinoplasty surgery; if anything, the nose becomes even more fragile until it completely heals. Because accidents or injuries happen all the time, some patients have to get revision rhinoplasty to repair their nose after it experiences some new trauma.
New Function Problems
Noses are designed to help channel the air you breathe into your lungs while cleaning and warming it. When your nose is structured correctly without any issues, breathing is easy. However, if there’s something blocking or disrupting the flow of air, breathing becomes difficult or even impossible. Sometimes these issues can come from new trauma, but they can also be caused by a previous rhinoplasty that didn’t heal correctly.
Cookie Cutter Noses
Unless you get your original rhinoplasty from a really inexperienced surgeon, this isn’t likely to happen to you. Rhinoplasty experts have spent years training and refining their techniques so that they are creating noses unique to the individual instead of doing the same nose on every patient. However, there is a slim possibility for rhinoplasty patients to get a nose that doesn’t quite fit their face. This happens most often among patients of non-Caucasian ethnicities. Every ethnicity has its own unique characteristics for each facial feature – that’s why there is a whole subspecialty of rhinoplasty called ethnic rhinoplasty. Trying to put a nose from one ethnicity onto an individual of a different ethnicity usually doesn’t have positive results, especially from a surgeon who doesn’t have the proper training.
Botched Surgery
There are risks involved in every surgery, and rhinoplasty is no different. Whether it is from a functional or cosmetic standpoint, sometimes the procedure is a complete failure for the patient. This is very rare and the odds of it occurring are greatly minimized by choosing an experienced and highly-trained surgeon.
Minor Touchups
A lot of patients want to have an additional rhinoplasty because they aren’t totally satisfied with their new nose. That doesn’t mean that the nose is completely wrong; it just might need a small adjustment to be perfect. Noses can also develop minor imperfections in how they look, sometimes from the healing process or from smaller force impacts to the nose. Not all these minor touch-ups require surgery, but those that do can benefit from revision rhinoplasty.
Revision Rhinoplasty from Dr. Bustillo
There are many different reasons why people get rhinoplasty to begin with and almost as many reasons to get revision rhinoplasty. Whether your nose needs a complete do-over or a little fix, it’s important to choose a plastic surgeon with experience in original and revision rhinoplasty.
About half of the patients Dr. Bustillo sees at his practice in South Gables, FL are nose surgery patients. Dr. Bustillo is a double-board certified facial plastic surgeon who has been creating beautiful and natural-looking noses for over a decade. You can check out some amazing before and after pictures here and read some reviews from his current and former rhinoplasty patients here.
If you’re among the 20% of rhinoplasty patients who is interested in having an additional rhinoplasty surgery to get the nose you’ve always wanted, contact Dr. Bustillo today by calling (305) 663-3380 or by filling out a patient contact form to schedule a revision rhinoplasty consultation.