Qualifications of a Surgeon for Rhinoplasty Procedure?

You have entered into an area of debate--who knows how to best perform a rhinoplasty? Qualified surgeons may be trained in ENT and facial plastic surgery, general plastic surgery, or maxillofacial surgery. How does one decide? Just being accredited by some society doesn't necessarily mean they are a skilled surgeon. Your best bet is to talk to patients who have had surgery by these doctors, and look at their before and after photos. Make sure the doctor understands what your goals are from surgery. That is the only way you can decide which surgeon better suits your neeeds.

Choose a board certified plastic surgeon or an ENT facial plastic surgeon. Make sure they perform many rhinoplasties per year and look at their before/after photos. Ask about pre op imaging as well.

The best surgeon to perform your rhinoplasty procedure is the one who has dedicated experience in this particular plastic surgery procedure. There are great facial plastic surgeons out there as well as oral maxillofacial  surgeons who perform cosmetic nose reshaping procedures. But within each of these groups you need to find a surgeon who has dedicated a good portion, if not all, of their practice to cosmetic nose surgery. There are definitely some factors you should consider to help you make a more informed decision. One of them is a robust portfolio of their prior rhinoplasty work. Truly dedicated rhinoplasty experts have much larger than average portfolios to show you the wide variety of noses they have done thus demonstrating consistent success with rhinoplasty surgery. These photos should include frontal and side views of the same patient in combination. Taking a side view of a hump deformity correction before and after surgery simply doesn't give you an accurate assessment of that result. You need to see the nose from different angles to judge correctly. Looking at their website, you will also get a fairly quick overall sense that rhinoplasty surgery is one of their specialty procedures. This should be rather obvious by seeing how much information they have on rhinoplasty surgery alone. For instance, our practice website has an entire section dedicated to our online rhinoplasty tutorial that is intended to provide up-to-date information on this one plastic surgery procedure. In addition, we have an entirely different website (Sandiegorhinoplasty.com) dedicated to just cosmetic and functional nose surgery information. I wish you luck in making your final decision. Sincerely, Dr. Hilinski