Because of the nose surgery I impulsively got 4 years ago, I spent almost half a year emotionally struggling before finally getting it removed at VN.
My personal impression? To put it simply, I had heard enough before my first surgery to know I wanted to use as few materials as possible, so I only used silicone and ear cartilage. But maybe it was cheap and low quality after all, or maybe the doctor’s skill was just terrible. My nose shape was not pretty at all, and recently it even started oozing fluid, so I couldn’t live normally.
After consulting at several places, including the hospital where I had it removed, the common opinion was that the silicone was the main cause. If I wanted, I could also do a revision by replacing the silicone, but since it was an infected nose, everyone agreed that the implant currently inside my nose absolutely had to come out first.
While looking into all this, I got extremely stressed, and I also hated the pinched feeling of my nose, so after consulting with Dr. Oh Seung-il, I decided to go ahead with complete silicone removal. Other places said they would need to remove even the unused septal cartilage or ear cartilage and add it back again, but here they said they could reuse the ear cartilage I had already used, depending on the condition, so I went with that.
I had read a lot of reviews before going, so I expected the removal surgery to go well, but for me that wasn’t the issue. After the removal surgery, it turned out the doctor found not only silicone in my nose, but also something that looked like a silicone block? He said that was probably what caused the infection. When I had the CT scan, they had already said they could see another material in the columella, so it was really chilling.
At least they reused the ear cartilage and proceeded with the surgery. The silicone was removed cleanly, and the oozing has completely stopped. And other hospitals had told me that if the silicone is removed, the nose might look collapsed, but after taking it out, it actually looks appropriately natural. I kept thinking I should never have touched it in the first place and regretted it so much.
One tip I can give from going through nose surgery all the way to silicone removal is: don’t just look for the cheapest place;; make sure you consult at least 3 places (I only went to 1 place for my first surgery and rushed into it lol) and compare materials across hospitals before deciding. Also, if possible, I recommend looking for a place that is good at things like open-structure surgery or septal extension, because being good at difficult surgery means the doctor really has skill..
Now I don’t have that unnatural feeling in my nose anymore, and I spend each day feeling grateful that the surgery ended safely at VN. I’m never doing impulsive cosmetic surgery again.