Bulbous Nose and Retracted Nostrils 3 Months After Rhinoplasty, Am I Looking at the Final Results?

It is too soon to be concerned about the final appearance of your nose.  At three months after a rhinoplasty, you are still in the early stages of healing, and swelling in the tip of the nose typically requires the longest amount of time to resolve.  You should expect to see continued resolution and changes to the contour of your nose over the next six to nine months.   

Swelling after any rhinoplasty persists for one year or more. Especially after revision rhinoplasty, swelling may take longer. There are other factors that affect swelling such as thickness of skin, use of cartilage grafting, the condition of the nose at the beginning of the procedure, patient propensity for scarring, number of revisions, length of surgery, among other factors. However, if you see significant deformity in the nose, then it's time for a consultation with a facial plastic surgeon.

You still have a considerable amount of edema in your tip. If your nose was significantly deprojected then you will have excess skin which needs at least a year to fully contract. Be patient and work with your surgeon.

I tell this to ALL my rhinoplasty patients and you will hear it from almost ALL plastic surgeons:  Do not look at your nose for the first 8 months after your surgery.  It will take that long to get a sense as to how it will ultimately appear, and it will take 12-18 months to fully heal.  Take comfort in the fact that nothing can be done about it right now - just be patient.

You are still early in the healing curve and the tip is the last to really change. It appears to me that you have had an open tip procedure. This will result in longer tip swelling and temporary collumela protrusion

From the pictures you submitted it appeasr that you have thick skin on the tip. Very tricky to work with this, as the changes done underneath to the cartilage will not reveals through a thick skin "envelope". You also have some nostril retraction, this may be from several factors.

Due to the timing of you surgery, and without a personal exam, it  will be hard to predict what the final result will be.If the skin is as thick as it appears once the swelling has mostly gone (about 9 months or so) and the tip still appears bolbous, more cartilage not less, will have to be added to refine the tip appearance and fix the nostrils.

Best of luck,

It is hard to tell from your photos how things will end up, and for most the final results after rhinoplasty will take up to a year for all the tissues to soften and the details to show through. You are off to a good start and it is best at this point to be patient.
Best of luck,
peterejohnsonmd

You DO need to be patient - final results will not be for a year or more! Go back and express your concerns to your surgeon, sometimes careful injection of dilute steroids can help the swelling. 

That being said, you do seem to have a bit of a "pollybeak" or excess tissue just above the tip. That can be from excess cartilage in that area, scar tissue, or over aggressive removal of the dorsum. Combined with the retraction of the nostrils, I am guessing you may be having excess scar tissue forming and contracting. See your surgeon.

Yes, you are right. By 3 months around 80% of the results should be finall. I can conclude from your question, that you had a bulbous nose before surgery and you wanted a projected tip( not deprojected), if I could understand you question right, i think you got some results from your surgery, your nose is smaller ,and the tip is more defined than before. Howevere, more could be done to define the tip and reduce the alar fullness and reach more tip definition .The r the naso labial angle you have post op from the profile view is less what it should be in woman, more ( if any ) had to be done to retract the hanging  columella and lift it up to get the appropriate angle and the same time reduce the allar show.

At hree months post Rhinoplasty, surely some residual swelling still exists however, the tip won't rotate upward during the remaing healing phase but the tip itself may thin out, with time.  The shape of the nostrils will not change IMHO.