How Can a Nose Job Cause Deaths?

Dear MyLife21,


Death after a rhinoplasty is extraordinarily rare

It usually happens when a serious medical condition is not diagnosed properly or when people do not pay attention to certain medical problems

If you are a healthy person, it is more dangerous driving your car to the surgery center than it is to have a rhinoplasty...just to put things in perspective


Best regards,

Nima Shemirani

Rhinoplasty is an extremely safe and reproducible operation from an anesthetic standpoint. It is extremely unusual to have a death from a rhinoplasty, and having the surgery is safer than driving home from work every day. However, even though it's nearly impossible, it is not impossible. We check all of our patients and make sure they get a medical clearance before surgery to make sure they are safe and medically optimized before considering surgery. With the proper checks and proper anesthesia team, the chance of death with such an elective procedure is on the order of 1 in 1 million.
-Dr. David Mattos, New York Plastic Surgical Group

This risk is largely associated with a severe adverse problem with anesthesia, rather than the surgery itself. Since rhinoplasty is performed on relatively young and healthy people, it is possible that latent and congenital diseases may present for the first time, or become exacerbated by the stress of surgery. If you have no family history of allergies to general anesthetic, like malignant hyperthermia or pseudocholinesterase deficiency, and if you are otherwise healthy, surgery with a reputable rhinoplasty specialist and anesthesiologist should be well tolerated.