Methodology
A prospective study was conducted, including 16 consecutive patients (after exclusion of one patient) undergoing septorhinoplasty by a single surgeon (NA) and 32 controls. Patients were recruited from the senior author’s University hospital and independent practices. All were primary cases except one male patient, who had undergone two prior septoplasties at a different centre and required rib graft. Control patients were recruited from a general ENT clinic.
All participants completed the Standardized Cosmesis and Health Nasal Outcomes Survey (SCHNOS) and Body Dysmorphic Disorder Questionnaire (BDDQ) pre-operatively and again post-operatively (figure 1). Follow-up range was 9-24 months. Patients who did not attend follow-up were contacted by telephone to complete the questionnaires. One patient was not contactable post-operatively and had to be excluded from the analysis.
SCHNOS is a validated questionnaire that assesses functional and aesthetic patient-reported outcomes following rhinoplasty . Each question is scored on a Likert scale of between zero and five (zero being no problem, and five being an extreme problem).
The SCHNOS produces two scores; a nasal obstruction score (SCHNOS-O) and a nasal cosmesis score (SCHNOS-C). The SCHNOS-O is calculated as a sum of scores of items 1–4 divided by 20 and multiplied by 100. The SCHNOS-C score is calculated as a sum of scores of items 5–10 divided by 30 and multiplied by 100 (figure 1).
Data collection, methodology, analysis and presentation performed in line with PROCESS 2020 guidelines (PMID 33189880, http://www.processguideline.com/).