Rhinoplasty

Dr. Richard Hamilton performs rhinoplasty, or nose jobs, at his Adelaide, Australia practice.

Dr. Hamilton: "Rhinoplasty is an operation to reshape the nose, and sometimes reduce the size of the nose. It’s for people who feel the size or shape of their nose is out of kilter with the rest of the face. So you can find a pretty girl who’s got a bump on the bridge of her nose, or the nose tip is a bit bulbous, and it doesn’t fit with the rest of her features, her lovely eyes, and lovely cheeks and jaw and so forth, so it’s designed to help those people. It begins with a consultation, I want to listen to the patients, hear what bothers them, and hear what they want. I then need to make a detailed examination of the outer structures of the nose and the internals structures, the septum and the like. And then I’ll come up with a plan, and I’ll make a series of diagrams, and I’ll walk the patient through what’s involved in reshaping their nose. With the pictures I’ve taken, I can use computer imageing and show them the sort of shapes we can look at, and they can have an input on that. Sometimes it’s as simple as taking a digital photo and drawing on it. I make the decision and the plan at the time, with the patient’s input and agreement. It’s challenging surgery, it’s finicky, but it’s surgery that I love, and am trained for. It takes two, three hours, the recovery is extremely quick, the patients are in the recovery room for half an hour, and then they can go. The results are amazing. Patients usually are amazed themselves, because they forget after awhile exactly how they looked. When I can put up on the screen their pre-op and post-op images, they go, ‘Wow.’ I love doing rhinoplasty and making them so happy, because they feel better about themselves. If they had a nose that made them feel bad about themselves, they don’t like being photographed, they don’t like people looking at them side-on, and then they’ve got a new nose and they love being photographed, and they have big happy smiles on their face. And again, they usually give me a hug at the time of the last consultation, and I love it."