Crowdsourced Assessment of Aesthetic Outcomes of Dorsal Preservation Rhinoplasty

Abstract Background The inherent subjectivity in aesthetic outcomes presents a unique challenge in assessing rhinoplasty. Crowdsourcing has provided a new metric for objective analysis. The authors designed a retrospective study to compare the aesthetic outcomes of dorsal preservation rhinoplasty vs structural rhinoplasty. Objectives We aimed to objectively quantify the relative aesthetic advantages of performing a dorsal preservation technique. Additionally, we aimed to demonstrate the efficacy of crowdsourcing as an efficient and reliable method for evaluating any plastic surgery aesthetic outcome. Methods Patients’ preoperative and postoperative photographs were divided into 2 cohorts. Photographs were evaluated by crowdworkers on a secure online rating platform based on the overall nasal appearance, dorsal profile, dorsal aesthetic line symmetry, and dorsal contour, and rated their confidence about whether a patient had undergone surgery. A delta was calculated by comparing preoperative to postoperative states to represent an absolute value of improvement after surgery. Each cohort was compared with non-paired t tests. Results The structural rhinoplasty cohort included 34 patients. The dorsal preservation cohort included 30 patients. Both cohorts demonstrated improved aesthetic outcomes (dorsal preservation 0.300, 95% CI 0.047; structural 0.377, 95% CI 0.055). When raters were asked to predict whether a patient had surgery, the correlation coefficient of the structural cohort (0.74) suggested that a crowdworker was better able to identify whether a patient had surgery in those patients. The correlation coefficient in the dorsal preservation cohort (−0.0554) suggested that the raters were unable to identify which patients had surgery. Conclusions We found significant improvements in overall aesthetic outcomes with both techniques, although a more natural “unoperated” outcome was achieved when performing a dorsal preservation technique. We also provide evidence of the efficacy of crowdsourcing as an efficient and reliable method for evaluating aesthetic outcomes. Level of Evidence: 4 (Therapeutic)