How to travel for Rhinoplasty?

Hello Minn123,It is quite common to travel for rhinoplasty especially if there are no nearby rhinoplasty specialists. At my practice we see patients from all over Canada and have a well defined travel program. The length of stay in the city you have surgery will depend on your surgeon's assessment of your situation, but is usually about 1 week.It is is usually safe to travel after surgery but please consider follow up care. While it is uncommon to have a complication after surgery, it is important to be able to access your surgeon for questions and concerns for at least a year after the procedure. I see my patients on a regular basis after their surgery until they are considered fully healed, which takes months.Vancouver has several board Certified Facial Plastic Surgeons who are excellent and know to do vast numbers of rhinoplasty surgeries.Re before and after photos - the best way to assess what YOUR nose would look like after surgery is to have a consultation that includes computer imaging. During your consultation, your surgeon can explain what you can realistically expect from your surgery. Not everyone can have a perfect nose after rhinoplasty, and this is the reality that you are seeing in before and after photos. Seeing before and after photos of other patients is a small part of the process. What is more important is that you meet with a short list of rhinoplasty surgeons, meet their staff and see how you connect with them. Evaluate if you think you are meeting with surgeons who really do perform a lot of rhinoplasty, and who have a team that will be there to take care of you while you prepare and recover. Have a frank conversation, based on computer imaging done for you specifically, if your objectives are reasonable or if you will have to settle for something slightly less perfect than what you were hoping for. The consultation, aside from the surgery itself, is the most important part of the process. I've included a link below to some guidelines for assessing the quality of your rhinoplasty consultation.All the best,Tom Buonassisi

I have my patients who
travel from out of town stay for at least one week post-op so I can
evaluate them and remove the splint and sutures. I make
sure they’re doing well before they leave. I allow my patients to travel by air
7-10 days
post-op if they use Afrin spray during take offs and landings. Contact your
plastic surgeon
for further follow up visits.

It's quite common in my practice to have patients come to Seattle from out of state and internationally for surgery. It's recommended that you stay at least until your 1 week postoperative visit. I have found that most of my British Columbia based patients prefer having their office visits done at my more northern location (Bothell, WA) since it's closer to the Canadian border.You can read more about traveling to the Seattle area for surgery at my web reference link below. We can also help with hotel arrangements, etc. if you like.

It is very common in our practice to have patients fly in from out of town areas for rhinoplasty and fly out after 1 week.  There are a few considerations, especially for air ravel, which we discuss wiht patients.

I'll tell you how we handle it here. The patient sends photos, so we see if we can determine with some accuracy that the patient is actually a good candidate for surgery. If so, we arrange a date for the operation, with an in-person consultation the day before surgery.After surgery, we provide someone to stay with the patient overnight. After that, the patient is fine on her own at the hotel. She generally goes around town seeing things and entertaining herself for the week.One week after surgery, the splint comes off the nose, and the patient can go home that day. Return visits for follow-up aren't necessary, since we can send photos through the email to check the progress of healing.This is very common. Over half of my rhinoplasty patients are from out of state, about 15% from outside the U.S.