I’m a man now 4 months into recovery after revision rhinoplasty at Hwi Plastic Surgery.
I had osteotomy correction, removal of silicone, removal of the septal extension graft, and various other things. The tip was raised again with ear cartilage.
To give you the result first: From a nose with zero volume at all, like a tube with all the air sucked out of it, from a pinched, skinny, long, extremely ugly nose, I regained the width I wanted, and the tip became rounder. The pinched-looking alar wings were also successfully reconstructed into a fuller shape.
I only used ear cartilage, and there is currently no ear deformity at all. Everything is fine. The columellar scar has had zero scar care, but now it is almost invisible.
-------- From here on, there is also content about the first surgery hospital and the hospitals where I received revision consultations. --------
At the first hospital where I had surgery, because it was someone introduced by an acquaintance, I trusted them 100%, had a 5-minute consultation, and lay down for surgery, and they threw away all the strengths my original nose had, and gave me a straw-like, chalk-like nose that is impossible to describe in words, a pinched, skinny, long, ugly nose. I lived like that for over a year.
The one thing I had clearly asked for was, "I don’t want a chalk nose," but they just turned it into a chalk nose.^^
Looking back, why did they even do the osteotomy? Why did they correct the bulbous nose?... I have a lot to say, but I’ll stop there. I even searched for ways to restore a bulbous nose.
My nose originally had natural volume, but after surgery it just clung tightly like a deflated tube, and for 1 year and 1 month after the first surgery I truly experienced what it feels like when life falls to pieces. I felt real despair. I had taken surgery way too lightly and got badly burned.
I knew about Hwi Plastic Surgery while I was looking for revision surgery, but there were so few reviews that it was not a priority for consultation.
Then, while searching for osteotomy correction, I happened to come across the doctor’s anonymously run blog, contacted them through a comment, got a call the very next day, and because a consultation was available the following week at that time, I visited.
Before going to Hwi for a consultation, I had already gone to another hospital for revision consultation first (it’s famous on this community. It was my top-choice hospital.)
But when I went, they treated me like a delusional patient and refused surgery. (I’m grateful now.) When I mentioned osteotomy correction, they said I needed a spreader graft.
I really believed that was true. I thought that was what I needed. Looking at the CT, they said, "You are actually someone who didn’t really benefit from the osteotomy," "There are many people who are much more severe." If it’s not severe, are you supposed to just live with a half-botched result?;; No... I’ve had the habit of touching the nasal bone since my original nose, so I know better than anyone how thin it has become now.
So when I said, "You said the osteotomy had no effect, but for these reasons and those reasons, I clearly feel that it became thinner," they said, "Well, yes, since you had osteotomy, it would have become thinner." It was really like that. What kind of wordplay is that? I couldn’t feel even a trace of professionalism, but marketing must be really something amazing.
It wasn’t even a proper examination, and they didn’t even really look at my face. They barely looked at the photos I brought and just kept talking at length. I strongly felt that this was a hospital that created an atmosphere where patients are made to give up on aesthetic desires.
But this time I got osteotomy correction without a spreader graft. A spreader graft also has limitations as a surgery, and it should only be done when it is truly necessary, and I was not a necessary case.
If I had somehow begged and received surgery at that hospital, I don’t know what would have happened after getting a spreader graft I didn’t even need... They had written on a Q&A site as if that were the correct answer, but there are countless patients whose lives are hanging by a thread because their faces were ruined by osteotomy, and it makes me angry. Honestly, when it comes to osteotomy correction, I think it would be better to honestly say they cannot do it rather than pretending otherwise.
I guess that’s just how they survive, because doctors are people too. But plastic surgery is not a product you can buy and sell, something you can throw away if you don’t like it, and it is irreversible, so I feel there are too many doctors who behave as if they are handling an object too casually.
I also went back to the hospital where I had my first surgery twice because I wanted to finish things properly, thinking of the acquaintance who introduced me. (Of course, if I knew even somewhat what I know about plastic surgery now, I would never have gone, but back then I knew nothing.)
And the director said that there is absolutely no hospital that listens to requests in such detail and told me to go find one if I could... He said he had done the surgery well and the balance was perfect now, and then started gaslighting me, asking what osteotomy correction even was...
Then even when I showed two photos side by side, one with a clearly pinched, chalk-nose feeling and one with a chalk-nose-free, masculine nose with volume, he said both looked pretty to him. Isn’t that basically admitting outright that he has no aesthetic sense?
If I brought celebrity photos, he scolded me, saying they are just celebrities. If I explained the details of what I wanted, he scolded me for talking about the feeling. What exactly was I supposed to do?
When I said my nose seemed too long, the doctor said the problem was my weak chin and recommended a chin implant (I really almost did it), and when I asked whether the dark shadow beside the nasal bone caused by the osteotomy could be fixed somehow, he said it might be possible to fill the area where the nasal bone was cut with filler. Dr. Hwang said you should never get filler after nose surgery.^^
If I had had revision surgery at the place where I got my first surgery, I would have crossed a truly grotesque, irreversible river.
Those kinds of horrible hospitals that gaslight you, operate on you, and then change their attitude afterward? There are still countless places like that.
At the other hospitals I visited, when I went for consultation, because I really do not know the terminology well, I explained the things I disliked in terms of the alar wings looking pinched, why my nose became skinny and long, how the tip drops like a witch’s nose whenever I make an expression, and just all sorts of strange things, but when I explained them through the overall feeling, they treated me like I had a mental illness. They said that, from their point of view, it was fine.
There are too many hospitals that gaslight patients as if it is the patient’s mental problem. I’m really glad I escaped this plastic-surgery minefield after only revision surgery. --------
That was a long introduction, but Hwi Plastic Surgery was shocking at consultation time in a good way.
At Hwi, they explained the things I had been curious about all this time in such a professional way (with surgical-method and anatomical explanations) that, personally, even though there were things I could not fully understand, the consultation was actually fun.
Above all, it was such a relief to have a conversation free from patient-blaming gaslighting.
Just like at the hospitals I had visited before, I explained the parts I didn’t like in terms of feeling rather than terminology, but they really understood exactly what I needed explained and told me in detail why my nose became that way, how it should be improved, and how they would perform the surgery. The frustration I had felt for so long completely disappeared, and the photos of revision patients they showed during the consultation were exactly the kind of result I wanted, which was decisive.
After a consultation of almost an hour, I no longer had any reason to look elsewhere, so I canceled all the other consultations I had booked, asked the coordinator for the earliest possible surgery date, and had surgery two weeks later.
The result was successful, and the 1 year or so when my life fell apart after the first surgery feels like a dream.
(I had no idea about the first surgery, didn’t research anything, and failed, so for revision I was determined to do ten or so rounds of research and consultations everywhere because I thought it had to succeed.)
Anyway, Director Hwang Se-hwi of Hwi Plastic Surgery is an outstanding doctor. He has high authority in the plastic surgery field, and in terms of both skill and character, he is second to none.
When I was doing my research, Hwi was the only hospital that placed importance on the frontal view of the nose. They really are excellent at creating tip contour. (This is not just me saying it. More than ten years ago, he researched the importance of cartilage repositioning, restoration of supporting structures, and methods for preventing the tip from dropping, and was the first to present this to the academic field. I understand that many doctors have since been influenced by this.)
If you want a nose that is straight but not pointed, not a straw-like chalk nose, and a natural volume with a round tip feeling, I highly recommend them. (What I mean is not a bulbous-nose feeling or a spread-out feeling.)
And one thing you should know is that no hospital in this world has 100% success for every single patient.
But you can clearly distinguish hospitals with fewer complications and dissatisfaction from those with more. That’s what plastic surgery is like. That’s why you need to be careful, and you should not go to hospitals that change their attitude after surgery.
If you want zero complications for life and 100% success even after a 5-minute consultation, I recommend simply not getting surgery at all.
I’d love for my nose to stay like this forever, but since you never know, I’m taking it that way. Dr. Hwang is the kind of doctor who takes responsibility for his own patients, so I’ll trust him and live with peace of mind.
Once you get plastic surgery, you have to keep worrying about it and managing it for life. Even so, if you insist on going through with surgery, you really need to choose the hospital carefully, and rapport with the doctor during consultation is extremely important.
Just having a 5-minute consultation and lying down thinking, "They’ll probably do a good job," is simply leaving it to luck, so if something feels off during the consultation, skip it.
People who are just starting to look into their first surgery probably won’t feel this deeply, but there are countless people on their 4th, 5th, 6th, 7th surgery... and they did not become that way because they were foolish.
From my own experience, becoming a revision patient happens incredibly fast. You really have to choose the hospital well. For now, Hwi is definitely one of the few trustworthy hospitals in Korea. Of course, if you look for another hospital as good as Hwi, there may be others, but Hwi is my final destination, so I don’t know information about other excellent hospitals.
If some of you reading this review think it’s just the usual story of someone whose surgery went well recommending a hospital, that’s fine. For the record, I am telling you the facts no matter what, and I have written less than half of what I wanted to say.
Even without my review, Hwi already gets patients through word of mouth, and I’m just someone who thinks that if even one person who got hurt because of advertising, or is about to get hurt, or who knows nothing at all, can avoid this minefield by reading my post, then that is enough.
And you need to think long-term about the nose. You can’t tell from right after surgery to one month. Because of swelling, everything looks voluminous. There are really many people who had a pretty nose from right after surgery up to within a month, but then later, as the swelling goes down, it magically turns into a skinny straw-like chalk nose.
Please do not trust side-view reviews, one-month reviews, or especially reviews that are not even a month old. Not if you don’t want a front-view straw-like chalk nose like mine.
Hwi is not a hospital that makes straw-like chalk noses, regardless of what you need. That is just Dr. Se-hwi’s aesthetic sense. Anyway, I’ll stop here.