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“I had some really good questions today about Post Care in Rhinoplasty. I wanted to go in a few of the principles that are important in what you can do or can’t do after you have Rhinoplasty surgery that we explained all of our patients.
First of all, the nose is a very vascular structure obviously there are a lot of blood vessels everybody is probably experienced a nose belief at some point in their life so we know it now it doesn’t take a lot pressure damage or bumping of the nose to cause bleeding. Along with that, now if you’ve had surgery there’s already injury to the nose that you’re recovering from so a small bump from a pet or a child which is the two most common areas where you can get bumped in the nose after surgery is something that we want to avoid. That doesn’t say that you’re going to avoid your children but you got to be careful if there’s small children that they don’t tilt their head back when you’re holding them and if you got a happy dog or cat that like’s to jump up on you, you want to be very careful when they’re around that they’re not bumping into your nose.
Rhinoplasty surgery of course we want to avoid bleeding and my basic premise on this or 10 and about Post-Operative activities and exercises, there should be no bending, lifting or straining exercises for 2 weeks after the surgery. Bending over for yoga increases the blood pressure in the head and it could increase the risk of bruising doing high Val Salvam maneuvers like you might do bearing down with weight lifting would not be a good idea but for all of our patients I encourage them, when they feel enough to with a day or so to get out and take a walk and do normal aerobic type of exercising that actually helps you heal faster that actually helps to make the swelling go down more quickly. This doesn’t mean you go out and try to jog or marathon it means you’re going out and doing what your body tells is safe and comfortable.
Some other good questions that I’ve come up of course are “What do you do about your nose in terms of swimming and showering and getting it wet”. First thing is making sure in our case we use cast on the nose it stays on for a week, we want that cast to stay in place that helps to secure the bones and cartilage in the right places so I don’t want that to get wet, come off suddenly. With that said, once the cast is off people are welcome to certainly shower, they can go swimming although I tell people to avoid hot tubs and public pools for at least 3 weeks and really when I say swimming it would be keeping the head out of the water for the first 2 weeks to 3 weeks or until I or your doctor clears you for swimming and if it’s being done in a public swim facility I would say you’re at risk like wait at least a month or until your doctor clears you.
The other questions that commonly or most not so commonly come up are things like scuba diving. Scuba diving when you’re having a nose surgery involves a mask that puts pressure directly on the nose and really it takes 2-3 months for those nasal bones to completely stabilize so I tell… And there’s a condition called mask squeeze where quite a bit of pressure can occur on the mask could actually do the bones and change the outcome of your surgery. We want to avoid mask squeeze in scuba diving for at least 3 months so we know that the nasal bones are stable so if you’re planning, if you’re a scuba diver and you’re planning on Rhinoplasty surgery you probably want to do it during the winter months when you’re not typically out diving that’s a basic rule or premise.
Other questions about activity include facial expressions, blowing your nose and I think you can gently blow and this is up to your doctor now. Different doctors have different opinions about this but likely blowing your nose after any packing is removed is okay but any kind of strong blowing can again increase the risk of starting bleeding up so we want to do mostly nasal washing, if you feel congested, we use lots of nasal saline during the recovery to keep the nose flushed and then if there has to be a little bit of blowing it’s got to be very light blowing. Things like laughing or touching your nose are certainly acceptable but you want to do that with care and laughing is certainly a part of and even if you have a drippy and you are laughing and we were correcting that drippy nose that’s not going to have an overall impact on your outcome.
If you have any other questions about Post Rhinoplasty Care I encourage you to visit our website @MaasClinic.com or certainly you can call and schedule a consultation either virtual or live and I’d be very happy to discuss with you Rhinoplasty procedure, how it’s done and expected recovery and things the do’s and don’ts on Rhinoplasty surgery. This is Corey S. Maas MDTM on looking best.”
