Self-Esteem in Rhinoplasty Patients: A Comparative Study

Self-esteem is one of the most important psychological aspect of cosmetic surgery, in our case aesthetic rhinoplasty surgery. Self-esteem can be described as one’s attitude towards ownself. Our aim is to assess the self-esteem pre-operatively in patients seeking aesthetic rhinoplasty with respect to those seeking functional rhinoplasty and also compare the post-operative improvement in the self-esteem in those patients. This is a Prospective comparative study in a Tertiary care centre. A total of 48 patients who were planned to undergo rhinoplasty over a period of 1 year in a tertiary care centre, A total of 48 patients (24 requiring aesthetic rhinoplasty and the rest functional rhinoplasty),grouped according to their primary objective, were asked to fill up Rosenberg’s self-esteem scale pre-operatively and 6 months post-operatively. Independent t test was used for data analysis. The mean value of self-esteem in aesthetic rhinoplasty group was significantly lower as compared to functional rhinoplasty and there was also significant improvement of self-esteem score post -operatively in the aesthetic rhinoplasty group. Age,gender, marital status, socio-economic status and educational backgrounds were analyzed and there was no significant differences in these factors on comparison between the two groups. Our study showed that self-esteem is an important parameter in cosmetic surgery as patients opting for aesthetic rhinoplasty had lower self-esteem score pre-operatively and there was significant improvement of these scores post-operatively.