Can Morphing Influence the Patient's Decision to Undergo Surgery

Morphing is one of the first digital effects developed by the film industry and consists of the fluid, gradual and seamless transformation between two images of different shapes, which can be objects, people, faces, landscapes. In plastic surgery, morphing has been used to show the patient a possible outcome of an operation, such as what the face might look like after a rhinoplasty operation. To undergo a cosmetic surgery the two most important things are the awareness that the patient acquires before the surgery and the motivation to perform the surgery. Awareness is reached with the preliminary visits and it is the surgeon's obligation to inform the patient about the risks, benefits and possible complications of the surgery but above all about the possible realistic results that can be obtained so that the patient has realistic expectations. Motivation is the right key to achieving the final goal, which is the result of the intervention. Moreover, if complications arise, he will be ready and aware to deal with them. Using morphing during the first visit can be disadvantageous for a correct motivation for the surgery and for a correct awareness of the possible result. Level of Evidence V This journal requires that authors assign a level of evidence to each article. For a full description of these Evidence-Based Medicine ratings, please refer to the Table of Contents or the online Instructions to Authors www.springer.com/00266.