Should You Tape Your Nose After Rhinoplasty?

As you all may know, I love taping of the nose in the proper post-op patients. If you have thick skin, if you're a revision with thick skin, if you want the swelling to go down as soon as possible, and you want to get a little cute slope, if you want to get a cutesy nose, taping definitely helps. Watch my videos. I have multiple videos on our YouTube channel, and you can watch the technique.

Taking the tape off properly is just as important. If you peel it off too quickly, it actually creates more swelling by lifting the skin up with it. So we have very specific tapes. 3M Micropore is the tape I use. That's the best tape for this. And Detachol is the liquid we use for removal. You can find all of that on Amazon, and you can see it in our videos.

Now, the skin is going to be oily. Imagine taping the nose and not being able to really wash it daily and take care of it daily. So the skin is going to get a little oily. You may even get some whiteheads. As long as you haven't busted out in tons of pustules and pimples and your skin is fairly healthy, you can do the taping. The tape is more important than the skin condition at that point, because you're reducing swelling and scar tissue development. The more the nose swells, the more room there is for scar tissue. So taping definitely helps. When I started taping noses, it dramatically reduced the number of steroid injections I did. But the skin's got to be healthy enough.

Again, for oiliness of the skin you can use a toner, an alcohol wipe, a variety of ways of basically making sure the tape sticks. But do it for one, two months, three months, maximum six months, and then you'll be done. At that point, you can take a little bit better care of your skin. However, if your skin is irritated, if you're allergic to the tape or the material, if you're really broken out in pimples and pustules, you don't want to keep taping it. That's going to damage your skin and maybe even cause an infection. So it's important to have healthy skin, but your skin is going to be a little bit oily. The pores are going to be a little bit plugged up.

Definitely no Biore strips, definitely no pore strips, at least for the first six months after rhinoplasty, because anything that lifts the skin upward with it, including the removal of the tape, which is why you've got to do it carefully, would actually create more swelling and more scar tissue. It's really important to know how you're taping it. So again, watch the techniques, because if you tape it incorrectly, you can cause pinching of the nostrils, you can cause other issues. So whenever you tape your nose, I always ask my patients to send me pictures of their own first tape job so I can make sure they're doing it the right way. If you have your own doctor, send it to your own doctor and make sure you're doing it the right way. It's important to know what you're doing.