APS Aesthetic Plastic Surgery · 2021

Characterizing Patient Questions Before and After Rhinoplasty on Social Media: A Big Data Approach

Tseng CC, Gao J, Talmor G, Paskhover B.

PubMed 33723644 Publisher (DOI)Free full text (PMC)

What this paper says

Analysing 2,014 rhinoplasty questions posted on a cosmetic surgery social platform, appearance was the leading topic both before surgery, 46.1 percent, and after it, 47.5 percent.

Overview

Rhinoplasty success is often judged by patient satisfaction, which depends on expectations and on the care experience. The authors state postoperative concerns have been studied more than preoperative questions. This study collected the most viewed rhinoplasty questions from Realself.com, sorted them into before and after surgery, assigned categories based on recurring topics, and used a machine learning approach to identify the most common ones.

Sections of note

Analysis of 2,014 questions: 957 preoperative and 1,057 postoperative; the journal assigns level of evidence V.
The most common preoperative questions concerned appearance, 441 questions or 46.1 percent, function, 102 or 10.7 percent, and cost, 94 or 9.8 percent.
The most common postoperative questions concerned appearance, 502 or 47.5 percent, what behaviour is allowed or disallowed, 283 or 26.8 percent, and symptoms after surgery, 235 or 22.2 percent.
Questions were categorized using topics found in the data itself.
An educational handout covering the 10 most common questions from each period was developed from the analysis, mostly about appearance.

What it means for a patient

Appearance dominates what people ask about at every stage, roughly ten times more often than cost.
After surgery, activity restrictions and expected symptoms become major concerns that consultations may not have covered.
These are questions from people posting publicly online, which is not a representative sample of rhinoplasty patients.
No outcome is measured; the study describes what people ask, not what they should know.

Why this paper matters

Consultation content is usually shaped by what surgeons think patients need, and this study measures what patients actually ask. It identifies postoperative activity rules and symptom expectations as underserved areas. Whether an educational handout built from this changes satisfaction was not tested.

Terms

Machine learning: computer methods that find patterns in large sets of data.
Preoperative: before surgery.
Postoperative: after surgery.
Realself.com: a public website where people discuss cosmetic procedures.
Level of evidence V: the weakest evidence category, covering opinion and descriptive work.

Summary written by rhinoplasty.cc from the abstract, 2026-09-09; not medical advice. The authors' own abstract follows.

Abstract

Background: As an aesthetic surgery, a successful rhinoplasty is often assessed by patient satisfaction, subject to a diverse array of qualitative factors including patient expectations and happiness with care provided. While substantial effort has been dedicated to understanding patients' post-operative concerns, addressing patients' pre-operative questions has been comparatively less studied. This study analysed pre- and post-operative questions about rhinoplasty on social media to gain insights into patients' concerns and develop targeted educational material.

Methods: The most viewed rhinoplasty questions on Realself.com, a social media platform for discussions about cosmetic surgeries, were collected and analysed. Questions were then stratified into pre- and post-operative and further assigned categories based on common topics found in the data. Using a machine learning approach, the most common pre- and post-operative questions were determined.

Results: 2014 rhinoplasty questions were collected in total, with 957 pre-operative and 1057 post-operative. The most commonly asked pre-operative questions were about appearance (n = 441, 46.1%), function (n = 102, 10.7%), and cost (n = 94, 9.8%). The most commonly asked post-operative questions were about appearance (n = 502, 47.5%), behaviour allowed/disallowed (n = 283, 26.8%), and symptoms after surgery (n = 235, 22.2%). An educational handout with the 10 most common pre- and post-operative questions was developed using machine learning analysis, with the majority of questions about appearance.

Conclusions: Patients primarily expressed concern about appearance when asking questions about rhinoplasty on social media, along with other aspects of their pre- and post-operative course. The educational handout developed by this study can be applied to address commonly asked patient questions during pre-operative education.

Level Of Evidence V: This journal requires that authors assign a level of evidence to each article. For a full description of these Evidence-Based Medicine ratings, please refer to the Table of Contents or the online Instructions to Authors www.springer.com/00266 .

Abstract as indexed by PubMed; the article is open access (PubMed Central).