Most people think of a rhinoplasty as a “nose job” intended to change the way it appears. The term plastic surgery is derived from the Greek word Plastikos which means “capable of being molded or shaped.” So, if you add the suffix “…plasty” to a word, it just means a changing of the shape of the root word. In the case of a rhinoplasty, “rhino” is the Greek word for nose. As another example, a cleft lip repair is formally known as a “cheiloplasty” where “cheilo” is the Greek word for lip. We don’t usually think of a cleft lip repair as a mere appearance-altering surgery: it serves to restore normal anatomy. The same thing applies to nasal surgery. In fact, the majority of nasal surgeries in the United States have a primarily functional role (to restore breathing) but there are still a large number that are done primarily for cosmetic purposes alone.