RhinoplastyRhinoplasty at 8 WestOver 2,500 rhinoplasty procedures performed. Dr. Buonassisi is one of Canada's most experienced facial plastic surgeons.
TechniquesRhinoplasty TechniquesEvery approach available — open, closed, preservation, ethnic, revision & more. The right technique is chosen for your anatomy.
Before & AfterReal Patient ResultsEvery case performed by Dr. Buonassisi. Unretouched photos published with patient consent — use filters to find cases matching your anatomy.
Why 8 WestWhy Rhinoplasty at 8 WestRhinoplasty is the only procedure Dr. Buonassisi performs. 4,000+ procedures, 25 years of focused practice, accredited facility.
Dr. Thomas Buonassisi, FRCSC, ABFPRSAuthor · Reviewer
Facial Plastic Surgeon · Founder, 8 West Clinic · Vancouver, BC
Dr. Buonassisi is a dual board-certified facial plastic surgeon with over 25 years of experience in facial surgery exclusively. He has performed over 2,500 rhinoplasties and is the founder of 8 West Clinic in Vancouver. All content in the Knowledge Hub is written or reviewed directly by Dr. Buonassisi.
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<p>In this video, Dr. Thomas Buonassisi, MD, FRCSC — Specialist in Otolaryngology – Head and Neck Surgery, with a practice limited to facial plastic surgeries, shares his insights on rhinoplasty, a procedure he has performed over 2,500 times. With over 20 years of experience, Dr. Buonassisi highlights the intricate balance between achieving aesthetic beauty and maintaining or improving nasal function. The video delves into the complexities of rhinoplasty, emphasizing the importance of understanding the nasal anatomy, including the septum, turbinates, and cartilaginous framework. Dr. Buonassisi explains that every rhinoplasty is bespoke, tailored to the patient's anatomy and goals, ensuring that the nose not only looks natural but also functions well. He stresses that the consultation is a critical step in the rhinoplasty journey, where expectations are managed, and candidacy is assessed. This is not a mere formality but a vital part of planning a successful outcome. The video also touches on the emotional aspects of undergoing rhinoplasty, acknowledging that it is a deeply personal decision for many patients. Dr. Buonassisi's approach is patient-centric, focusing on delivering results that enhance the patient's natural features while ensuring optimal breathing function. What are the key components of a successful rhinoplasty? A successful rhinoplasty involves addressing both the aesthetic and functional aspects of the nose. This includes understanding the nasal bones, septum, turbinates, and cartilaginous framework to ensure the nose looks natural and breathes well. How does Dr. Buonassisi approach rhinoplasty consultations? Dr. Buonassisi treats consultations as a critical step in the rhinoplasty process. It is where expectations are aligned, candidacy is assessed, and the patient gains a clear understanding of what is achievable. What is the significance of the nasal anatomy in rhinoplasty? The nasal anatomy, including the septum, turbinates, and cartilaginous framework, plays a crucial role in rhinoplasty. Each component contributes to the overall aesthetic and functional outcome, ensuring the nose looks natural and functions properly. Why is rhinoplasty considered a bespoke procedure? Rhinoplasty is bespoke because it is tailored to the individual patient's anatomy and goals. There is no one-size-fits-all approach, and each plan is designed to enhance the patient's unique features while maintaining or improving nasal function. What should patients expect during the recovery process? Recovery from rhinoplasty varies for each patient but generally involves some swelling and bruising, which subsides over time. Patients are advised to follow post-operative care instructions carefully to ensure optimal healing and results. How does Dr. Buonassisi ensure natural-looking results? Dr. Buonassisi focuses on preserving the patient's natural features while making the desired changes. His anatomy-first philosophy ensures that every decision serves the patient's natural structure, resulting in a refreshed appearance rather than a different one. What role does patient candidacy play in rhinoplasty? Patient candidacy is crucial in rhinoplasty as it determines whether the procedure is suitable for the individual. Factors such as nasal anatomy, overall health, and realistic expectations are assessed during the consultation. How does Dr. Buonassisi's experience benefit rhinoplasty patients? With over 20 years of experience and having performed over 2,500 rhinoplasties, Dr. Buonassisi brings a wealth of knowledge and precision to each procedure. His expertise ensures that patients receive personalized care and achieve the best possible outcomes. Results vary. This content is for informational purposes only and does not constitute medical advice. Book a consultation with Dr. Buonassisi to discuss your individual candidacy.</p>
Full Transcript
It is close enough to me. So there's a study that came out recently that I think is genuinely worth talking about. It comes from EMBL Heidelberg, that's the European Modern Biology Laboratory, and it was published by Cell Host and Microbe, which is one of the leading journals in microbiology and infectious disease, just came out in June of twenty twenty six. So the headline finding is that researchers have identified a consistent gut bacteria pattern associated with colorectal cancer, and it's related to dietary fibre intake. So I really want to walk you through what they actually did and what they found and what it means, because there's a lot of nuance here that gets lost when this kind of research gets summarized in a headline. So let me start with some background. The gut microbiome is the community of bacteria, the archaea, the fungi, and the viruses that live in your gastrointestinal tract. And in a healthy adult, we're talking about trillions of microorganisms from hundreds of species. And this community does a lot more than just help with digestion. It plays a central role in immune regulation, metabolic signaling and the production of short chain fatty acids and other compounds that influence how the rest of the body functions. So the composition of your gut microbiome is shaped by what eat, your antibiotic history, your age, your geography and your genetics. It's not static, it shifts in response to lifestyle and disruptions to microbiome diversity have been Woah, that's way too fast. Scroll speed. I'm going start that again. How do I start it? So the composition of your gut microbiome is shaped by what you eat, your antibiotic history, your age, your geography and your genetics. And it's not static. It shifts in response to lifestyle and disruptions in microbial diversity and balance, a state called dysbiosis, have been associated with a growing range of conditions, including metabolic disease, inflammatory bowel disease, and cancer. So colorectal cancer is the third most common diagnosed cancer globally. Researchers have suspected for a long time that the gut microbiome was connected to colorectal cancer and certain bacteria appear more frequently in people with colorectal cancer or with this disease while others are depleted. But the problem has been reproducibility. So most of the studies on this were small, conducted in single populations and used different sequencing methods. So it was very hard to know which microbial changes were genuinely linked to the disease and which were artifacts of how the study was designed. So this new study sets out to address that directly. The research team, which was led by George Zeller at EMVL Heidelberg and Leiden University Medical Center, they reanalyzed data from twenty seven independent studies. That's six thousand seven hundred and seventy nine publicly available gut microbiome sequencing profiles. That's six thousand seven hundred and nine publicly available gut microbiome sequencing profiles from colorectal cancer patients and healthy controls. This is one of the largest single disease gut microbiome meta analyses ever conducted. They also analyzed nine zero six intestinal tissue samples so they could compare what's happening in stool samples with what's actually happening in the tumor itself. One of the key methodological advances in this paper is that they developed computational tools to integrate microbiome data sets generated using different sequencing methods. This is a significant challenge in the field because different sequencing approaches can produce systematically different results. By solving this, they were able to apply a unified analysis framework across all twenty seven data sets, including data from populations that weren't originally recruited for colorectal cancer research at all. The central and analytical tool was a machine learning classifier. It was trained to distinguish cancer associated microbiomes from non cancer microbiomes and it outputs a score, essentially a number reflecting how cancer like a given microbiome profile appears. And crucially, this score can be applied to any existing human gut microbiome data set, including data sets from dietary intervention studies. That turns out to be very useful and we'll see why in a moment. So what did they find? The analysis identified a robust colorectal cancer microbiome signature that was consistent across populations, sequencing methods, and age of onset groups, including both early onset and late onset colorectal cancers. The last point really matters. Early onset colorectal cancer, meaning diagnosed before fifty, has been rising in many countries. There has been a real question about whether early onset and late onset disease share the same biological features or whether they're meaningfully different. This study found that the microbial signature is consistent across both groups. That's an important piece of the puzzle. This study found that the microbial signature is consistent across both groups. That's an important piece of the puzzle. In tissue samples, cancer associated microbes could be detected in early stage tumors. This suggests that microbiome changes may appear before the cancer is clinically advanced, which has obvious implications for early detection research. In stool samples, however, detection accuracy was somewhat lower for early stage cancers and for tumors located further upstream in the colon. The likely explanation is that microbes from smaller or more distant tumors are harder to detect in fecal matter material. The likely explanation is that microbes from smaller or more distant, microbes likely explanation is that microbes from smaller or more distant tumors are harder to detect in fecal matter than microbes from tumors that are larger or closer to the rectum. This is an important limitation to understand. The study also found that microbes enriched in tumor tissue were similar to colorectal cancer's signature observed in stool samples. So the stool based microbiome profiling does reflect, at least in part, what's happening at the tumor site. That's a meaningful finding for a non invasive screening research. Now, the finding I think is most practically significant for people focused on long term health. The researchers explored how diet relates to the colorectal cancer microbiome signature. They found that a stronger cancer associated microbiome pattern was linked to lower dietary fiber intake. And conversely, in dietary intervention studies that increased fiber intake, the cancer associated microbiome score measurably decreased. I want to be precise about what this means and what it doesn't mean. It does not mean that eating more fiber prevents colorectal cancer. The relationship between microbiome signatures and cancer causation is still an open question. This is observational data. It establishes association, not causation. What it does mean is that fiber consumption appears to be associated with a less cancer like microbial profile. And that shift, what it does mean is that fiber consumption appears to be associated with a less cancer like microbial profile and that this shift is measurable using the machine learning tool they developed. That's a meaningful finding because it suggests that diet can shape microbial communities in ways that may be relevant to long term cancer risk and that we now have a way to quantify that. The study also took a detailed look at a group of bacteria called Fusobacterium, which has been repeatedly implicated in colorectal cancer. By analyzing hundreds of Fusobacterium genomes, the researchers found important differences between subspecies. Some carried different virulence related genes and some were more consistently enriched in colorectal cancer samples from specific geographic regions. Fusobacterium nucleatum subspecies Animalis showed consistent enrichment across continents, but other Fusobacterium species and subspecies showed more geographically variable patterns with several almost exclusively found in cancer patients from Asia. This level of resolution matters because bacteria grouped under the same genus can differ substantially in their biology and their potential effects on human health. Treating all Fusobacterium as equivalent would miss this. Now I want to be honest about the limitations of this research because I think that's important. This is a meta analysis of observational data. It establishes associations. It does not establish causation. This study cannot tell us whether the colorectal cancer microbiome signature causes cancer, results from it, or both. That's a question of considerable biological importance and it remains open. Precancerous adenomas remain difficult to detect using stool microbiome profiles. The adenoma associated microbial changes were weaker than those seen in established colorectal cancer and showed limited overlap with the cancer signal. Machine learning classifiers trained to detect adenomas showed variable performance across cohorts. This is an important limitation for any future clinical application. Reliable detection of precancerous lesions would require more sensitive approaches, larger data sets, or combinations with other biomarkers. The microbiome based classifier also did not match the performance of Fecal Immunochemical Tests, or FIT, which is the current standard non invasive screening tool for colorectal cancer. The researchers are explicit about this. This is not a diagnostic test. It is a step toward understanding how microbiome data could eventually complement clinical research and decision making. So what does this mean in practice? The findings add weight to the idea that the gut microbiome is not merely a bystander in colorectal cancer. The findings add weight to the idea that the microbiome is not merely a bystander in colorectal cancer. It is an active participant. Its composition reflects disease state and it responds to dietary intervention. The dietary fiber finding is the most actionable piece here. Fiber intake is one of the most consistently modifiable factors in gut microbiome composition. Most adults in Western populations consume well below the recommended intake. The evidence base for fiber's role gut health is already substantial. This study adds another dimension to that picture. The machine learning classifier developed in this study could also serve as a research tool for understanding how other lifestyle factors like sleep, exercise, alcohol, antibiotic use influence disease associated microbiome patterns in existing data sets. That's a methodology. The machine learning classifier developed in this study could also serve as a research tool for understanding how other lifestyle factors like sleep, exercise, antibiotic use influence disease associated microbiome patterns in existing data sets. That's a methodological contribution that will likely generate on follow-up research. The full science update on this study is available to Lontro members at edu. Lontro dot com. I'm not going to do the call to action. Okay, I'll try it. The full science update on this study is available to Lantro members at start. Lantro dot com. It includes the full article with references, the study details, and limitations sections in full. If you're not a member, there's a one month free trial available right now. Go to start. Lontro dot com. There's no commitment, and I'll see you in the next one.
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