Rhinoplasty at age 13 by Dr. Philip Young Bellevue | Seattle:
Topic: Rhinoplasty at the age of 13? Is it okay to do the surgery on someone at this age.
I had someone write me this:
My son has a hump on his nose from banging it in the past . Now he seems to be hitting it more and it is sort of red. He mentions that it hurts there as well. We live in Australia and the surgeons won’t touch her till he is older I don’t think the bump is going to get any bigger. Why do we have to wait? Maybe we should come up to America to get this surgery done? Please let me know what you think. My boy is 13 years old and he is very handsome. His nose looks good otherwise just the bump.
This is how I answered:
Thanks for writing us. I think that at the age of 13 your son’s nose is still growing. I would wait until he reaches the age of at least 16. Otherwise if you operate on his nose at this point, it could alter the way the nose grows. That is probably the reason why the surgeons in Australia are not willing to do the surgery at this time. You can write me back at anytime.
There are some surgeons that would operate earlier. Most of the time this is usually in the setting of a cleft lip and palate, congenital type deformity, where the nose may be significantly affected by this condition. Even still, the formal rhinoplasty in this situation is usually done at the age of 16 after the nose is fully developed. Many surgeons do some mild alterations at the time they work on the cleft lip at the age of 3-6 months. They do an intermediate repair at anywhere from 1 to 14 years of age. The definitive rhinoplasty is done at the age of 14 for females and 16 for males at the earliest. Most surgeons like to wait until at least the age of 16 for girls and boys to make sure most all of the growth is done by then.
Thanks for reading, Dr Young
Dr Young specializes in Rhinoplasty in Seattle, Facial Cosmetic and Reconstructive Surgery and is located in Bellevue near Seattle, Washington