Preparing for Your Rhinoplasty: Tips and Guidelines

Rhinoplasty is an operation that helps to correct the features such as nose size and shape, as well as structural changes. The reasons are generally common but the needs and preparing for the rhinoplasty process may differ from patient to patient. But, do you need to make some preparing before undergoing rhinoplasty? 

Yes, you need to make some preparing for your rhinoplasty. These preparations need to be done to increase the success rate of the results. Of course, cooperation with your surgeon is essential in this process. 

In this article, we will discuss the preparation process for rhinoplasty. What should you do before undergoing an operation, and why should you be careful after the procedure - along with recovery and healing?

Researching and Choosing the Right Surgeon

The first preparation is researching and choosing the right surgeon. They should be experienced, professional, and qualified for this procedure. You can look for their certificates, previous operations, and feedback from other patients of them. Reputation plays an important role in there. You need to research and choose them carefully.

Understanding the Rhinoplasty Procedure

 There are several different methods exist for rhinoplasty, and each differs from reason to reason. Generally, there are two reasons for it:

• Functional Reasons: These reasons are generally related to breathing and the factors that affect breathing such as the deviated septum, high nasal bridge, and correcting other nasal problems. 
• Aesthetics Reasons: These reasons are generally related to cosmetic corrections such as making the nose more symmetrical, correcting the size and shape, etc.

Therefore, understanding the rhinoplasty procedure is up to reason in general. In the combined operations, the surgeon considers these two main reasons along with the procedure.

Both included incisions, reshaping and other additional changes. 

Preparing for Your Rhinoplasty Consultation

Preparing for your rhinoplasty consultation requires careful planning, and is an important step to achieving successful results and increasing the possibility of a success rate. To prepare for the consultation, there are some tips for you:

• Know your goals: Consider and think about what you exactly want. Do you want to solve your breathing problem or change the nose size and shape? Discuss them with your surgeon.
• Don’t be afraid to ask questions: You can take notes of your questions before consulting. Don’t be afraid since the discussion is essential.

Following Pre-operative Guidelines

Before the operation, you need to be careful about your lifestyle. Following these guidelines would be helpful.

• Your surgeon will ask you about your medical history. You can prepare the needed documents.
• Avoid smoking. It increases the risk of complications.
• Avoid certain medications including supplements. You can ask your surgeon to give you a list of them.
• Avoid alcohol since it increases the risk of bleeding.
• Stay hydrated

Preparing Your Home for Recovery

Just as preparing yourself, you need to prepare your home for recovery to make it faster and healthier. Creating a relaxing and comfortable place would be good for you. Here are some tips:

• Creating a relaxing place would be good, and you can make it by putting plenty of pillows around your bed. 
• Putting the prescribed medications in a mini box close to you would make your reach easier.
• Stocking and preparing easy food would help you, be careful that they should be easy to chew.

Arranging for Assistance During Recovery

Previously, we mentioned how should you prepare your home and yourself. And now, we will talk about arranging for assistance. During recovery, assistance is required. You can plan your needs by talking with the surgeon.

Asking for help with cooking, cleaning, or running errands from family and friends, or close ones would be helpful.

Knowing What to Expect After Surgery

After having rhinoplasty surgery, of course, there will be some expectations in your mind. Preparing for them is needed, and knowing what to expect will help you to reduce the anxiety of stress.

• You may feel pain and discomfort after the surgery, and your surgeon can prescribe some medications to relieve them. 
• Swelling and bruising can be seen as common after the surgery, especially around the nose and cheeks.
• You need to limit your daily activities and need to avoid workouts. 
• Following your surgeon’s pieces of advice and attending the follow-up appointments is required.

Caring for Your Nose After Surgery

To have a healthy recovery after the surgery, caring for your nose is essential. Here are some tips that you can follow:

• Keep your head elevated. For the first week, keeping your head elevated will help to reduce swelling. You can use extra pillows during sleeping to adjust the height.
• Use ice packs. Using and applying ice packs would help to reduce pain.
• Protecting the nose. Protect your nose from impacts during recovery.

Following Post-operative Guidelines

After the operation, there are some things that you need to follow for having a smooth and healthy recovery. Note that they’re also part of caring for your nose.

• Taking the prescribed medications regularly. To stay away from post complications, you need to take them as the surgeon suggests.
• Avoid using alcohol and smoking. They will increase the rate of complications and decrease the healing time.
• Avoid touching your nose and protect it from impacts.

Additionally, patience is important because the results will show themselves up to 6 months to 1 year.

Managing Discomfort and Pain After Surgery

To manage discomfort and pain after the surgery, following your surgeon’s instructions would be good. Since every patient has a different type of surgery (the reasons and the operations that are applied may differ) and threshold for pain, they would create a list for you the best.

To sum up, avoid heavy exercise, alcohol and smoking, heavy drinks, and take the medications regularly.

Are You Feeling Prepared for Rhinoplasty?

After reading the article, are you feeling prepared for having rhinoplasty? You don’t need to be afraid of having this operation. Prepare yourself, your home, and your needs carefully. Planning the needs and preparing before them the operation would make almost most the things easier for you. The final results will be ready within 6 months - 1 year.