Presented by APG
There are hundreds of thousands of TikToks dedicated to rhinoplasty recovery. It is a sea of swollen faces, bruises, and bandages all in the name of total transformation. But what if a nose job didn’t require you to go into hiding for weeks after? What if you were able to stroll around the day after your nose job?
Dr. Raj Kanodia, a world-renowned plastic surgeon and rhinoplasty specialist, is best known for his closed-surgery, scarless technique. “80% of my patients have no bruising,” says Kanodia. And the downtime for the procedure? “By day seven the bandage is gone and they can go out, put on makeup, go out for dinner, and celebrate”
Charli D’Amelio experienced Dr. Kanodia’s expertise firsthand, returning to her dynamic lifestyle rapidly after her procedure. Remarkably, less than a day following her closed surgery, she was already sharing her dance routines on TikTok, cast and all. This swift return to normalcy exemplifies the minimal downtime Dr. Kanodia’s patients enjoy. Charli’s ability to continue engaging with her audience, without skipping a beat, serves as a testament to the effectiveness and unobtrusiveness of Kanodia’s surgical technique.
This quick recovery time is only possible because of the closed-surgery technique Kanodia uses at his Beverly Hills practice. In a closed rhinoplasty, the surgeon makes all incisions inside the nostrils. The nose is not fully opened and the nasal structure is not exposed. All the work is done through narrow openings in each nostril. It’s much more common counterpart, open rhinoplasty, is performed from the outside of the nose accessed through a small incision on the columella (the fleshy column between the nostrils at the bottom of the nose), leaving a scar. While both are safe options, the recovery time between the two is vastly different.
“The risk and complications with an open approach amplify because there are more surgical alterations being inflicted,” says Kanodia. “There’s a lot more dissection of the tissue, there’s a lot more adding cartilage at the tip. There’s chances of ejection, there’s chances of distortion. In good hands, there’s less and less chances and risk, but it’s a very complex surgery.”
Khloe Kardashian also underwent a closed rhinoplasty with Dr. Kanodia, and her experience has been notably positive. She has been open about her satisfaction with the procedure, mentioning on social media that the recovery was surprisingly easy and straightforward.
Khloe highlighted the seamless nature of her experience, describing the recovery as a breeze and sharing that her only wish was that she had undergone the procedure earlier. Her journey adds to the narrative of minimal downtime and rapid return to normalcy after undergoing a closed rhinoplasty with Dr. Kanodia.
Most practices operate exclusively with the open method and it is still relatively rare to find a surgeon who does closed rhinoplasty. “I think the more surgical trauma you inflict, the more healing time it takes and more risk of nose looking surgical,” says Kanodia, who has decades of experience in the closed technique. “Even in the best hands, open or close, it takes a very intense desire or passion to be able to create something beautiful, to be able to improve on the existing nose, and yet not inflict a lot of surgical trauma.”
This holistic approach goes beyond just how they look and into their functionality. “For a lot of the musicians, a lot of the athletes, all I do is fix their breathing and recovery is even faster because we’re not breaking any bones,” says Kanodia. “It’s the gift of oxygen.”
While you’d have a very hard time figuring out exactly who Kanodia’s famous clientele are, his attention to detail doesn’t just ensure they are looking fabulous but are also able to support their singing with their breath before they embark on a world tour or a high-stakes basketball season. The healing time for this? Five days, no bandage or bruising at all.
Despite the TikTok trends, Kanodia refuses to reproduce the same button nose on all his clients en masse, going as far as turning away clients in search of shocking transformations of their natural features. It does not matter if they are an A-list celebrity, his consultations are rooted in full transparency around what can be done to the nose so that it remains in balance with the whole face. “I want to enhance noses,” Kanodia says. “I don’t want to change noses”