Rhinoplasty technique preserves ethnic identity
African Americans who underwent a nose job, also referred to as rhinoplasty, reported a high degree of satisfaction with the results.
Rhinoplasty was conducted using a three-tiered approach that included an adjustment in nasal height and angle with a reshaping of the tip and a reduction in the width of the nose.
Dr. Oleh Slupchynskyj and Marzena Gieniusz analyzed questionnaires completed by 75 African American patients who underwent the procedure at their private practice, the Aesthetic Facial Surgery Center of New York and New Jersey in New York City.
Twenty-one male and 54 female patients, 14 to 58 years old, completed questionnaires which addressed self-esteem, preservation of ethnic characteristics, degree of facial harmony, and overall satisfaction. Responses were scored on a 5-point where a score of 1 indicates not at all and 5 indicates very much to the highest degree.
A significant degree of preservation of ethnic characteristics was noted by the patients with an average score of 2.3), along with high scores for self-esteem (average score 4.3), and very high overall satisfaction scores (average score 4.6), and facial harmony (average score of 4.3), Slupchynskyj and Gieniusz report.
There were two major complications. One was an infection requiring implant removal and the other was scarring in the right horizontal incision. These two problems were treated with triamcinolone and composite grafting. The overall complication rate was 2.7 percent.
The authors attribute the high satisfaction rate to the attainment of facial harmony and the preservation of ethnic characteristics, which lead in turn to high self-esteem.
“In our opinion,” they write, “computer imaging is an indispensable tool in assuring realistic expectations, and more important, providing a better understanding of possible results, which leads to high patient satisfaction postoperatively.”
SOURCE: Archives of Facial and Plastic Surgery, July/August, 2008.
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