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  • Rhinoplasty Consultation and "Sculpting" Process
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Most people that come in for rhinoplasty surgery, they're thinking that their nose doesn't look right on their face. That's typically the primary complaint. Of course there's the associated functional disturbances too where they might have some difficulties breathing, but for the most part, the patients that I'm seeing in my practice, their nose looks disproportionate in some fashion. What I try to do is, again, start by explaining to the patient that the nose is made up an outer layer of skin, an inner layer of specialized skin called the mucosa. It's sort of housing, basically, individual segments or pieces of cartilage and bone that give us our unique shape and typically give that person the appearance of having a disproportionate portion of the nose or the entire nose.

From there, I explained to the patient that simply by separating or elevating the skin and sometimes the lining of the nose off of those segments that are creating the disproportionate features, we become a sculptor by actually excising or taking out some disproportionately large segments. Maybe we're correcting them by suturing certain segments together that need to be put together or sometimes we're actually adding cartilage or bone that may be disproportionately, again, deficient in a given area. It's simply putting the envelope back together again, casting it, and you have your rhinoplasty, your new nose.

Rhinoplasty Consultation and "Sculpting" Process

Dr. Michael Epstein explains the consultation process and the actual surgical process of a rhinoplasty.