Evaluate Your Nose

Careful consideration of an individual's surgical goals, combined with thorough examination of the nasal anatomy, is an integral step for all our San Francisco rhinoplasty patients. Dr. Mabrie considers the evaluation to be one of the most important and rewarding steps of the process. This page will instruct you on how to evaluate your nose yourself as you consider embarking on the path of modifying your nasal features.

How to Evaluate Your Own Nose

Before your consultation, you may want to do your own evaluation. We suggest these techniques as the most effective method to prepare for your appointment.

Look in the Mirror – Much of the evaluation may be done looking in the mirror. You can examine almost all of the different angles except a true profile, unless you have access to a 3-way mirror.
Look at Photos – Looking at photographs of your own image can also be helpful for looking at profile views. Sometimes looking at a photograph also provides a more objective viewpoint than looking in the mirror.

When you are evaluating your nose, pay particular attention to these 4 distinct anatomic areas:

How is the bridge? Is there a hump or is the bridge underdeveloped?
How are the sides of the nose? Is there a deviation or are there concavities?
How is the tip? Is it drooping, bulbous, or asymmetric?
How are the nostrils? Are they too wide or flare too much?

For information on a particular area and to see before and after examples of similar patients choose an area from the anatomic concern section in the upper right box.

Of course the best way to evaluate your nose is to have a consultation with a specialist. You may send photographs for a virtual consultation. If you do take advantage of our virtual consultation, it is most helpful to have a friend take photographs from as many of the following angles as possible and use a solid background.

The Consultation

During each San Francisco nose surgery consultation, Dr. Mabrie will review the Rhinoplasty Questionnaire completed by the patient and then discuss the goals and questions. Together, they will then look at the patient's nose in a mirror from all angles and identify the problem areas. They will discuss the size, proportions, and symmetry of the different anatomic areas of the nose. To aid in discussion, Dr. Mabrie will inject nasal saline into the patient's nose to simulate different surgical goals.

Dr. Mabrie works with men and women from throughout the Bay Area including San Francisco, Oakland, Walnut Creek and Pinole. Request a consultation online or call us at (415) 445-9513 today.

"Before every rhinoplasty surgery, I sit with my patient and examine the nose from every angle. Together, we make a list of surgical goals, and prioritize them. In addition to being one of the most important steps in rhinoplasty surgery, the evaluation can be also one of be the most fun because of the teamwork approach." – David C. Mabrie, MD, FACS