I’m really trying to be careful in choosing a hospital for this revision rhinoplasty..! My current problems are a short nose, silicone showing through the skin (slightly), and an upturned nose (I went to 3 places and they said it didn’t seem to be contracture). That’s my situation. You know short nose surgery especially needs extra care, right?
These are the things I plan to ask and check during consultations this time:
1. Sedation anesthesia? General anesthesia? General anesthesia is a specialized field that can only be performed by an anesthesiology and pain medicine specialist.
If there is no anesthesiology and pain medicine specialist for rhinoplasty, then only sedation anesthesia is possible for now.
If it is sedation anesthesia, blood pressure, pulse, and vital signs must be closely observed frequently during surgery to check the patient’s anesthetic state.
For rhinoplasty, general anesthetics such as propofol or midazolam are usually not needed. (If these were used throughout the entire surgery, there is a need to suspect ghost surgery.) Because propofol has the drawback of weakening respiration, if general anesthesia is performed, vital sign monitoring absolutely must be done. Check the vital sign monitoring machine!
In other words, as much as possible, find a place that performs rhinoplasty under sedation anesthesia, and even then get a definite answer on whether an anesthesiology and pain medicine specialist is on-site.
2. Regarding CCTV Check not only whether CCTV is installed, but also whether the patient can view it if desired.
3. Consultation method - Is the consultation manager mainly the one in control? Check whether the consultation manager first consults with the patient, directly decides the surgical method based on the patient’s financial capacity, the amount they can pay for surgery, and what the patient wants, writes it on one side of the chart, then hands it over to the doctor. In this case, the consultation manager is deciding the surgical method and type, and there is reason to suspect a less-experienced doctor or ghost surgery.
- Does the doctor come out for consultations during surgery or after putting a patient under anesthesia? They say it’s common for a patient under sedation anesthesia to be given additional anesthetic and left unattended for 30 minutes to 1 hour. No matter how attentive they are to me during consultation, what if I think of myself as the patient lying on that operating table? Horrifying; Thankfully, I eliminated one final candidate because of this ㅎ
4. Whether the operating surgeon participates before and after surgery On the day of surgery, the doctor should examine and assess the patient’s face and physical condition, but is the consultation manager doing this under the name of a preliminary exam? After surgery, does the operating surgeon personally check the progress carefully and provide care? Ask directly during consultation and get a definite answer.
5. Does one operating surgeon handle the surgery from beginning to end? It seems obvious, but surprisingly, there are quite a few cases where a nurse or less-experienced doctor handles the final steps during suturing; To check this, you need to be able to view the CCTV. If they get angry here, consider it hypocrisy and skip them~
6. Materials used for rhinoplasty Of course, of course you need to know this, right? These days, for revision rhinoplasty, some places even remove the materials that were inside and take photos of them. Ask in advance whether this can be confirmed~
7. Whether a nasal splint is used This depends on the case, but they say truly skilled doctors have short surgery times from the start and finish well so that bleeding does not occur, so they do not even use a splint… I need to look into whether this is exaggerated or actually true. It would be nice not to have the nose packed if possibleㅠ It’s so miserable.
8. Check the operating surgeon’s surgical experience level I’m in a situation where my nose needs to be lengthened more. Because of that, the most important thing is really how well they handle the skin. And because the nasal tip must not droop, I should listen carefully to how they arrange the cartilage too. I’m obviously planning to filter out any place that only does flashy noses, and I think I must check how much experience they have with this kind of skin dissection and how many difficult surgeries they have handled. Because of that, I’m only looking at people with at least 15 years of experience. I don’t want to become a clinical trial subject..
This is about what I’ve looked into! If there’s anything else I should check, please leave a comment. I hope everyone chooses surgery carefully and succeeds safely.