The Rhinoplasty Dressing and Post-operative Bruising

Dr. Lamperti discusses both the dressing that is used after rhinoplasty and the potential for bruising after surgery.

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Video transcript:

"Hello my name is Dr. Thomas Lamperti and I'm a double board-certified Facial Plastic Surgeon in the Seattle area. I'm here today to talk a little bit about the dressing after having rhinoplasty or nose job surgery. It generally varies depending on what exactly we're doing but most patients will have steristrip tape over their skin followed by an aquaplast or thermosplint. This is a type of plastic material that we heat up with hot water during your surgery while you're asleep--that allows it to be moldable. Then we place it over the top of the nose. It basically acts as a saddle or helmet, is how I consider it, to protect the nose and help maintain the position the position of the nasal bones if we reset those. If you haven't actually had any need for bone refracturing to straighten the nasal bones if they're crooked, we don't' actually need the cast, but we will have the tape to help with the swelling. Additionally, if you've had an open approach or external rhinoplasty with a small incision on the columella between the nostrils, there will be some sutures that we'll take out in a week. And all the remaining sutures inside the nose are dissolvable. If you've had an endonasal or internal approach we again will just use dissolvable sutures on the inside. So again nothing we have to remove. If you've had a splint placed on the inside of the nose to prevent scar bands on the septum, that's actually removed at the one week mark as well. Often patients wonder as well whether they'll have bruising after surgery. That really depends on what's done actually and is more of a case by case basis. Generally, if we do any controlled bone fractures to reset the bones there might be some bruising around the eyes. That's self-limited and lasts a couple weeks. If there's no bone fracturing to be done or if it's all internal work -- just the tip -- then generally patients don't have bruising at all. There will be swelling but no black and blue marks to deal with at all."