Is It Safe to Have a Rhinoplasty, Double-eyelid, and Jaw Reduction at the Same Time?

My answer would depend on what kind of jaw surgery you need.  If you need to have your jaw cut, moved, and then wired shut, I would advise against performing the rhinoplasty at the same time. The issue at that point would be one of airway management since you would have swelling of both the nasal and oral airway.  This would especially be a concern if the surgery is done on an outpatient basis.  It is an important consideration and one to discuss with your surgeon to see what their opinion is in the issue and find out if they do these combinations routinely.  The blood loss with these procedures is not a lot, so that should not be a problem.

In general, it is advisable to combine multiple facial plastic surgical procedures into one surgery because this decreases the overall anesthesia risk and the overall cost. 

Provided an individual is healthy, the greatest risk during anesthesia is the induction period at the beginning of the case.  Therefore, combined surgery reduces the number of anesthetic inductions. 

Combining various procedures is not recommended if one procedure will adversely compromise another procedure from a technical perspective.  In this case, the eyelid surgery should be performed first so that the swelling from the rhinoplasty does not interfere with the eyelid procedure. 

Mario J. Imola MD, DDS, FRCSC.

 

First you need to understand that this type of facial surgery is considered a low risk procedure by anesthesiologist.  While that does not mean no risk, the risk of mortality that occurs with any general anesthetic does not appear to be increase by this combination of surgical procedures.
It one longer surgery safer that three shorter general anesthesia's?  I am not aware of a study that specifically addresses this question.  Intubation ( putting in the airway) is stressful on the body even though you are not aware of this process as a patient.  However, having a longer surgery is associated with an increase of certain types of risk.  One thing is for sure, it is more convenient to have all three surgeries together because you have a single recover time.

The biggest concern I have about combining these surgeries is that it will compromise the eyelid surgery.  The jaw and nasal work is typically performed under general anesthesia.  To get the best out come from double lid surgery, the procedure must be done awake so the patient can open and close the eyes during the procedure.  There are a number of technical reasons for this.  Bottom line, having this combination of surgeries may be convenient, and is certainly reasonably safe, but the cost is a compromised surgical outcome particularly in regard to the double fold surgery.