When Choosing Rhinoplasty Surgeon, How Many Rhinoplasties Per Year Is Ideal for a Reputable Surgeon?

Excellent question.  It is important to choose a surgeon with rhinoplasty experience, knowledge, and expertise.  The American Society of Plastic Surgeons states that the average amount of rhinoplasties per year are 11 per surgeon.  It is also important to choose a surgeon who understands and respects not only the cosmetic external anatomy, but also the internal functional anatomy of the nose.  The nasal airway must be maintained or improved during rhinoplasty surgery.  Assure that your surgeon has experience in improving appearance and function.  

The key element in becoming an expert is not necessarily how many rhinoplasties you perform per year, it’s how many you do well and how your Experience and Expertise give you Good Judgment. This requires many years of experience. Becoming a true expert probably takes 10,000 hours of study and focus on teaching, learning, and performing rhinoplasty over many years. I perform over 200 rhinoplasties per year and over 50% of these are secondary rhinoplasties and are more complicated and difficult as much of the structural framework is missing. Choose your surgeon wisely so you don’t have to undergo a secondary rhinoplasty as this is the most complicated and most difficult operative procedure in plastic surgery.

Rhinoplasty is the primary focus of my practice, so I get this question a lot. The problem with the question, though, is that the patient has no way to verify the number the surgeon or his staff gives them. A surgeon can claim he does 20, 50, 100, 500 a year...but he could be lying through his teeth. There's no independent way to check.

And while experience is very important, quality is much more important. Some surgeons may do more, but are still no good at it and don't learn from their mistakes. Others may do fewer, but are exceptionally gifted at it. Smart, famous, popular, or expensive also doesn't necessarily mean good.

I usually suggest that patients get a sense of the surgeon's experience by looking at the relative weighting of procedures on his/her website. If there are a ton of breast augmentations and a couple of noses, you can guess where the experience lies.

All the best,

--DCP