Nose job before and after pictures are an important topic and they are a difficult tool to use correctly and to understand appropriately. Rhinoplasty may well be the most demanding operation of all plastic surgery procedures in the face. The position of the nose in the center of the face, the region which the brain is constantly analyzing subconsciously when people look at each other, contributes to even small changes being visible. As modifications achieved by surgical nose jobs are hardly ever reversible it is of great importance that rhinoplasty surgeons and patients reach a common ground with respect to the changes desired by the patient. Nose job before and after pictures help both parties to move toward such common ground.
Nose job before and after pictures – not a foolproof guide to finding a rhinoplasty surgeon
The most important limitation to understand with respect to nose job before and after pictures is that they represent the past, they are a rerun of last weekend’s game and no guarantee how the one coming up this weekend will end. First, when looking at nose job before and after pictures and comparing the before pictures of different patients and also your own nose with such pictures, it becomes evident that no two noses are the same. Similar – yes, identical – no. This is what makes rhinoplasty so interesting. No two noses and thus no two operative plans and operations are the same. So this is the point of departure. The controlled part of the equation that comes are the capabilities of the rhinoplasty surgeon. The results in nose job before and after pictures partially reflect what an individual surgeon’s operative technique is able to make out of the problem he was presented with. The unknown or uncontrollable part of that equation is the variability of tissue and healing characteristics of each individual patient, which cannot be influenced by the surgeon or technique to any significant extent.
Let us assume one is looking at a series of nose job before and after pictures with a starting point at least similar to one’s own nose. And lo and behold, it just seems perfect. The lines of the bridge flow nicely from the inner eyebrows to the tip, the tip is chiseled and sculpted and just set off the perfect amount from the bridge. These are certainly nose job before and after pictures every surgeon loves to show and every patient loves to see.
Alas, the own nose has fairly thick and oily skin which will not allow the subtleties of the shape of the tip cartilage to shine through to the same degree and there was also that accident playing soccer at high school which left that still somewhat visible dent in the nasal bone on the left side. Will the nose job before and after pictures under these circumstances show an equally perfect result ? Most likely not. Does that mean the rhinoplasty surgeon’s technique deteriorated ? No, his technique likely even got better between the past and now. The lack of identical appearance in the two sets of hypothetical nose job before and after pictures just reflects the subtle differences in starting points, different tissue and healing characteristics. Surgeons are not robots, but a rhinoplasty surgeon who has reached the flat part of his own learning curve usually has achieved consistency in his analysis, judgement, planning and technique.
Nose job before and after pictures – how to use them correctly
It is usually this consistency that makes sure that the entire process remains stable, meaning the differences between the two hypothetical similar sets of nose job before and after pictures are present and noticeable, but relatively small. Stability and instability are engineering concepts. In a stable process a small change in the initial conditions will result in comparably small changes in the result after completion of the process. Instability means the contrary. Patients usually obsess about looking at nose job before and after pictures. But do they know what to look for ? Signs of instability, although difficult to detect for a lay person, is an important criterion. Either one sees striking differences in the results for very similar starting points or the nose job before and after pictures constantly show always more or less the same nose regardless of how the nose looked prior to the rhinoplasty. Both may point at either inconsistencies in the technical execution of the procedure or inconsistent analysis, judgment and planning. Modern natural rhinoplasty techniques result in highly individualized appearances of the nose after rhinoplasty and not in a standard nose. If, say, removing a hump from the bridge of the nose once leaves the nose too small in relation to the rest of the face in one set of nose job before and after pictures and shows a distinct fullness just above the tip in the next set, the entire process of rhinoplasty may be in an unstable state.
Nose job before and after pictures – what do they tell ?
A couple of more words about nose job before and after pictures. They are a means of communication, not a guarantee of any outcome or a sales tool. One should consider to make a run if that appears to be the case. The rhinoplasty surgeon is trying to understand what the patient wants by showing pictures. Pictorial depictions are much easier to understand than lengthy verbal descriptions. Language is inexact and very limited information is transmitted as compared to pictures. The rhinoplasty surgeon and patient also speak really different languages. Pictures can say more than a thousand words. After reviewing nose job before and after pictures patients should have a realistic idea if the surgeon produces stable individualized results and the rhinoplasty surgeon should have an idea which anatomical features the patient likes and dislikes and what type of result they want. So these two pieces of information are actually conveyed during the review of photographs.
A conclusion of the above is that reviewing nose job before and after pictures transmits information in both directions. Unless viewed by surgeon and patient together this flow of information can not take place. Apart from patient confidentiality issues, before and after pictures in general sitting around publicly on websites and home pages are used as a sales tool, knowing that the onlooker has no idea what they are looking at. Quality of a rhinoplasty surgeon can hardly be assessed that way. What are they going to do – publish pictures of their worst cases ? These pictures are always going to look good, are sometimes of questionable origin and only show orientation towards sales and a somewhat cavalier attitude towards patient confidentiality.