I am stating that this post is a real experience I personally went through, not false information or an exaggerated defamatory post.
I had already been thinking for a while that I should get nose surgery. I personally felt uncomfortable with silicone and was worried about various side effects, so I had only been considering non-implant nose surgery, but then I happened to see a video of non-implant nose surgery on social media. When I watched it, I really liked how refined it looked and how the nose line turned out, and I thought it matched the kind of beauty I was after, so I saved it thinking I would get it done there someday. Then I finally had time, and if I didn’t do it now, I felt like I never would, so I just immediately booked a consultation together with rhinitis surgery, without knowing anything at all. To be honest, I went more with the idea of setting the surgery date right away than with the idea of just getting a consultation, and because I was strongly against silicone and worried about side effects, I had absolutely no intention of getting silicone. I was so focused on how smoothly they seemed to create a line without implants that I felt other clinics probably wouldn’t satisfy me, so I didn’t go around for separate consultations and just consulted here right away. I told the manager in charge that my concerns were a hump nose, a long nose, and a drooping tip, and I also asked the surgeon whether alar reduction could be done. He said that if the tip is lifted, the nostrils also lift and narrow, so it probably wasn’t necessary, and that made me trust them more because it felt like they weren’t recommending unnecessary procedures. And since silicone wasn’t going to be used, of course it wouldn’t be as smooth as silicone. To make it smooth and prevent unevenness, they suggested adding dermis (Megaderm) (1 mm) to the bridge, so I agreed to add it.
(I was told that the dermis could potentially be absorbed by about 30%, but since the point from the beginning was not to raise the bridge height but simply to avoid unevenness, I thought it wouldn’t matter. However, after the surgery I looked up information and learned that Megaderm doesn’t absorb evenly and could actually make the surface more uneven. I was never told this. If that was going to happen, I wondered why it was added at all.) - The manager in charge said that because it was only 1 mm, it wouldn’t mean much.
When I watched the surgeon’s non-implant surgery videos, the lines looked smooth with no unevenness at all, so I felt confident and paid the deposit. On the day of consultation, I wanted the earliest possible surgery date, so I checked whether the originally scheduled patient’s surgery time five days later could be moved earlier, and when they said it was possible, I booked the surgery for the afternoon.
Day of surgery Before surgery, I planned to show the doctor the reference photos I had brought and have the design decided. I kept waiting in the consultation room, and then they asked whether it would be okay to look at the design in the operating room. I said okay. After the surgeon came in, he drew the design with a pen, and it felt like it took maybe 5 seconds, 10 seconds at most, before he quickly finished and had me lie down on the operating table. Even then, I still thought the surgeon would take care of it well on his own. After all, even if I showed photos, it wouldn’t be possible to make it 100% identical, so I assumed he would adjust the surgery to fit my face.
7 days post-op The moment I removed the splint, I looked in the mirror and was just speechless, then put the mirror down. I wanted a slender, refined look with a strong glamorous feeling, but because of the swelling, my nose looked even more blunt. The line also looked uneven, the columella looked like it had been cut out too deeply, and my nose was lifted so much that it looked like a pig nose. I was shocked, but the swelling was extremely severe, so I thought it was just swelling. I also kept getting blocked up and breathing through my mouth, and at that time, maybe because blood had pooled or something, when the splint was removed, the nurse in the operating room called the surgeon over and he looked at my nose and squeezed it out firmly. (After that, pigmentation developed beside the bridge between the eyebrows.) Then, when I said my nose seemed too lifted, the columella seemed pulled in too much, and the bridge looked uneven, the surgeon said no, it was fine, so I thought it must be swelling. He looked at it for about 3 to 5 minutes, then left. I was told to go talk to the manager in charge in the lobby, so I sat and waited there, and then something started flowing out of my nose, so I went to the bathroom and saw that it was blood. I received hemostasis and swelling laser treatment and then went home.
2 weeks post-op The stitches inside my nose were removed, and the surgeon briefly checked the progress, about the same as before, and I mentioned the same issues again. He again said it was fine and left. By that point, the aftercare I had received after the nose surgery consisted of some injections and two swelling laser sessions, plus the swelling laser on day 7 when I had a nosebleed and the manager in charge saw my nose condition and said, “The swelling is pretty severe...” The surgeon seemed busy and always gave a very short progress check when I had dressings done and then left. At first, the manager in charge had mentioned a discount if I did video filming and wrote a review, but filming a video felt burdensome so I didn’t do it. Watching other people’s videos, it seemed like the surgeon would remove the splint and provide more care, and honestly I even thought I should have just agreed to film a video.
+ To keep the inside of my nose from drying out, I kept applying ointment, and since I was almost out of ophthalmic ointment, I asked the nurse in the operating room around the 2-week mark, and they said I could apply something like Madecassol or Fucidin, so I kept using that. But as it was approaching 3 weeks after surgery, the nasal blockage was still so severe that I went to an ENT clinic and received dressing care. They looked at my nose and asked what on earth had been done to it, so I said I had received rhinoplasty and rhinitis surgery together. When they said there was also inflammation, I immediately messaged the manager in charge on KakaoTalk and asked them to make a hospital appointment for Saturday. On Saturday, I visited the ENT clinic first for dressing care, then came to the clinic. The surgeon used what looked like a long cotton swab to clean it out, and after looking at it here, he said there didn’t seem to be any inflammation. So I didn’t go in for a 1-month checkup and instead booked a 3-month checkup and went home.
After that, I got dressing care at the ENT clinic about once or twice a week. There was a lot of crusting inside my nose, and the crusts were so sticky that they could not be removed all at once. I was told that as long as I visited regularly for dressing care and took medicine, it would be fine and there would be no spreading over the bridge of the nose, so I felt reassured. I took antibiotics for about a month and continued dressing care until after the 2-month mark. I was also told that bone could be visible? I asked whether that was okay, and they answered in a way that suggested it would be fine as time passed, so I did not make a separate issue out of it.
(Currently, most of the crusts have been removed and the nasal blockage has improved to some extent. However, the runny nose continues.)
After 2 months had passed, I hoped it was just swelling, but from the front the nostrils were much more visible than before, and the angle when viewed from 45 degrees on the left and right looked different. When I turned my head to the left, it looked okay, but when I turned my head to the right, the unevenness became more pronounced, maybe because the swelling had gone down. I contacted the manager in charge asking about AS because I wasn’t sure whether the hump had been reduced enough. But what the manager in charge said was:
"Hello, this may be because the lines on both sides can be different, but at the 1-month checkup nothing in particular looked abnormal, so since you already have a 3-month checkup scheduled for July, we’ll look at it then and check it with the surgeon. Are you asking whether a little more hump correction is needed?"
I was taken aback by the line about the sides possibly being different, but since the surgeon was supposed to check it once, I decided to look at it again at the 3-month checkup. Until then, I kept taking photos of my nose all day to check it. If it looked even a little okay, my mood was fine that day. If it looked uneven again, my mood would drop. People around me said I looked like Pinocchio and that all you could see were my nostrils, and from the front, unlike before, my nostrils were so visible that I looked stupid. I kept taking selfies like I had lost my mind, checking and deleting them, and I lived spending hours each day just looking at my nose.
3-month checkup My nose before surgery was a crooked nose that bent like this: \, and because osteotomy was done, that part improved compared to before. The long nose also improved. The nostrils that looked lifted right after surgery had come down somewhat, but they still showed more than before. Even though I had some asymmetry before, it had never stood out like this, but after surgery, from the front the nostrils are clearly visible and look uneven, so it gives a bristly, fierce-looking impression ( 0 ) ( 0 ). The unevenness at the 45-degree angle is still there. When I turn my head to the right, the bridge between the eyebrows looks sunken and the hump area looks protruded.
Two days before the follow-up appointment, they suddenly called and said that because of the surgeon’s surgery schedule on the appointment day, it would be difficult to do the follow-up that day at all. Since I told them that I only had time that day, they said there might be a waiting time, and I honestly only felt like they were just receiving new surgical patients and wanting to move my follow-up to another day. It was absurd. Anyway, I visited the clinic on the scheduled day. They said that if the unevenness bothered me too much, they could fill it with filler. I felt that putting filler into a surgically treated nose in the first place didn’t seem right, so I said I didn’t want filler. Then they said they might be able to shave the hump a little more, but they couldn’t guarantee that it would become completely smooth, and it might even become stranger. So I ended the consultation like that, and since I didn’t think there was any point in even doing a 6-month follow-up, I said I would go home without making another appointment. But the nurse in the operating room said it would still be better to meet the manager in charge, so I kept waiting. Then what they said was about how to handle the 6-month checkup. I had just said a moment earlier that I wouldn’t be coming for the 6-month follow-up, so I was annoyed that I had waited just to hear that. On the way home, all I could do was cry. The surgeon spoke in an ambiguous way, so I’m just planning to wait a little longer for recovery and then undergo revision surgery at another clinic later.
I also had rhinitis surgery at the same time, but after the surgery they did not separately review the CT or follow up on it. I had the procedure because I always had one nostril blocked and it was inconvenient when sleeping, but in the usual standing position it is okay, while the nasal blockage remains when I lie down to sleep.
Additionally, the manager in charge used informal speech in between, which I found uncomfortable. They should really fix that. The nurses in the operating room were so kind from start to finish that I am still grateful. On the day of surgery, when I went home, I was still not fully awake from anesthesia and was dazed, but on the way out they supported me all the way to the front entrance on the first floor, and at the follow-up they told me it would be okay and not to worry too much, which helped me a lot mentally.
This post was not written to defame the hospital or spread false information to damage its reputation, and I state that there is no false information in this post. It was written with the aim of helping people who are interested in cosmetic surgery make decisions, and it was written based on the rights of consumers guaranteed by our Constitution and the Framework Act on Consumers. It is shared for the purpose of information sharing and helping other patients, and I state that it has no intent to slander the medical institution beyond objective fact sharing and the public interest.
This review is a postoperative review pursuing a refined look.