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POSTED UNDER Rhinoplasty Reviews

He Botched my Nose

ORIGINAL POST

He Botched my Nose

I have never written a review for anything in my entire life until now. Usually if service at a particular venue isn't great, I'll just shrug it off and forget about it. I'm naturally a very passive, chill person who lets most things slide. However, the disastrous result of my rhinoplasty with Dr. Buonassisi is something that I can't shrug off because it stares back at me in the mirror every single day. I still can't believe that this is my new reality, I honestly feel like I'm in a nightmare that I can't wake up from. I can never hide the poor results of this surgery because it's literally in the centre of my face. I went to 8 West for a rhinoplasty to remove a bump and de-project + rotate the tip. The outcome of my surgery is a collapsed middle 1/3 of the bridge and a saddle-nose deformity. There is a huge dent on one side of my nose, and it makes my nose look extremely wonky and asymmetrical. From the profile, you can very clearly see where my nasal bone ends and the cartilage of the bridge begins because there's an obvious step-down from the nasal bone. I trusted the numerous educational videos and beautiful before + afters posted by 8 West clinic featuring Dr. Buonassisi's work. I went into this surgery thinking that even if the outcome wasn't aesthetically perfect, I at least wouldn't be botched since Dr. Buonassisi has so much experience in rhinoplasty. I trusted him to take care of my face. I'm shocked that out of all the rhinoplasty success stories his clinic showcases online, it's me who had suffer the disastrous consequences of a nose job gone wrong. I know that it's inevitable for any surgeon to sometimes have a bad result, but why did it have to be with me..
Every day I wake up and am full of anxiety over the fact that I paid someone to ruin my face, and I can never return back to the past before I had surgery with him. I don't even know if it's possible to fix what he's done to me without putting myself at risk of so many more complications from a revision surgery. All I can do is wait until it's been a full year of healing before I can seek out another doctor to fix this, and even then I don't know if it's possible to restore my nose to something that looks normal and not operated on and full of bumps and dents.
What hurts me even further is the fact that Dr. Buonassisi has shown very little care for me and my situation. It took so many weeks of back and forth emails with his staff until he looked at the photos I sent to see what the problem was. I had to keep waiting for his staff to show him the photos and then they would write back to tell me what he said about them. The entire process was extremely slow and the outcome was simply him simply telling them to tell me to wait until my next follow up months from now. I understand that he said this because I'm still healing and nothing is certain until it's been 1 year, but the fact that he never tried to communicate with me 1-on-1 via email or phone (it was all via his staff) and showed no interest in examining me in-person (for another several months) to see if the apparent collapse I'm experiencing could be putting my breathing at risk or something else, really made me feel like I've been left out in the cold after already experiencing the traumatic effects of a nose job gone wrong. I feel so uncared for by him as my surgeon and me as his patient.
I would never wish this horrible experience on anyone. I'm finding it incredibly difficult to get on with my normal life because of the profound effects this botched surgery has had on my self-esteem and anxiety. I sincerely hope that I can one day fix my nose and live a normal life again.

seeking_revision's provider

Thomas Buonassisi, MD

Thomas Buonassisi, MD

Board Certified Facial Plastic Surgeon

4.7 | 228 Reviews
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Replies (3)

I had the exact same experience with my rhinoplasty done by Dr. Buonassisi a few years ago. I was left looking unrecognizable, it has been an extremely traumatizing experience. I look in the mirror every day and can't believe what a mistake I made going with him. It's been a few years and I've finally gained the courage to seek a revision as I have been so scared to go through the process again.
Same here. I just wish I could travel back to the moment I decided to get my nose job done with him.
I had the same experience and the whole office tried to gaslight me. I have nerve pain shooting through my right nostril up into my sinus if I wear any glasses now.
This sounds awful. I was wondering if you could share photos with me
My experience with him was a total train wreck. I paid a fortune just to have my nose come out looking worse than it did before. The results were nothing like the mock-ups he showed me pre-surgery. When I brought it up, the staff totally tried to gaslight me. I guess I can’t blame them since they work for him, but it was still incredibly frustrating. As for the doctor himself... Based on my impressions on him as well as the surgery result, I definitely wouldn't recommend him. If you’re thinking about a rhinoplasty, please, please do your homework first.