💎 Plastic / Reconstructive Aftercare
Rhinoplasty Aftercare Instructions
A day-by-day recovery guide for rhinoplasty: what to expect, how to care for yourself, and when to call. Free to read and print.
Typical recovery: about 42 daysPlastic / Reconstructive
What to expect
Your Procedure Determines Your Care
- •This nasal surgery draft stays intentionally conditional because closure, reconstruction method, site, devices, and anesthesia change aftercare.
- •Your surgical team's exact written instructions are the source of truth for this procedure.
Do Not Borrow Another Procedure's Timeline
- •Dressing changes, support devices, positioning, therapy, and return to activity require procedure-specific clinical decisions.
- •Contact the clinic if this plan does not match the operation, dressings, devices, or instructions you received.
Rhinoplasty recovery, day by day
Day 0
Your nasal surgery protocol
- Use the exact written home-care instructions from your surgical team. This draft does not replace the operation-specific plan they approved for you.
- Leave any nasal splint, packing, tape, or external dressing in place until the removal time in your surgeon's instructions. Do not adjust it yourself.
- Take only the medicines and doses in the plan from your surgeon or prescribing clinician. Ask before adding, stopping, or changing a medicine.
Driving, support, and position
- If you received sedation or general anesthesia, do not drive and follow the adult-escort and home-support plan from your surgical team.
- If you received local anesthesia only, drive only when your clinic says it is safe and the dressing, pain, vision, movement, and medicines do not impair you.
- Use the head-elevated sleep position your surgeon prescribed. Do not substitute a generic position if your written plan says something different.
Days 1-3
Protect the surgical area
- Protect your nose from pressure and contact. Use the exact clinic instructions for glasses, nose blowing, rinses, and skin care.
- Do not place ice, makeup, skin products, or devices on the nose unless your surgeon showed you where and how to use them.
- Follow the clinic's closure-specific instructions for stitches, staples, Steri-Strips, skin glue, or an open wound. Do not treat these closures as interchangeable.
Watch the right details
- Contact your surgical team about a splint or packing that shifts, becomes soaked, or causes pressure that is getting worse.
- Call the surgical team if a dressing becomes soaked, displaced, too tight, or wet before its planned change.
- Avoid soaking and do not start ointment, silicone, massage, or other wound products until the surgical team approves them for this closure and site.
Days 4-14
Procedure-specific follow-up
- Your surgeon decides when packing, tape, external stitches, or a nasal splint can be removed and when normal activity can resume.
- Keep every scheduled wound, dressing, device, reconstruction, and therapy visit that applies to your operation.
- Do not advance lifting, exercise, driving, work, or other activity until your team clears that activity for this procedure.
Days 15-42
Continue the approved plan
- Continue wound, device, support, therapy, and activity instructions until the responsible clinical team changes them.
- Start scar care and sun protection only after the area is fully closed and your clinical team gives a site-specific plan.
- Ask for reassessment if pain, swelling, function, skin color, or the wound is getting worse instead of improving.
When to call your provider or 911
- •Call 911 now for trouble breathing, chest pain, fainting, confusion, or swelling of the face or throat
- •Call your surgical team promptly for bleeding that does not stop after following their pressure instructions or for rapidly increasing swelling
- •Call your surgical team for fever or chills, spreading redness or warmth, pus, new odor, wound opening, or pain that is worsening instead of improving
- •Call your surgical team promptly for bleeding that does not stop after you follow their pressure instructions, new vision changes, or rapidly increasing facial swelling
When in doubt, call your clinic. For a medical emergency, call 911.
Recovery milestones
- Day 3
Early Surgical Review
Confirm the operation-specific dressing, wound, support, position, and medicine plan with the surgical team.
- Day 14
Recovery Progress Check
Notice what is improving, unchanged, or worsening. Contact the care team if symptoms are getting worse or the next step is unclear.
- Day 42
Recovery-Plan Review
The responsible clinical team reviews healing and decides whether restrictions, therapy, support, or scar care should change.
For clinics
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