The Dallas Rhinoplasty Meeting
For four decades the way an American surgeon learned rhinoplasty was to go to Dallas in the spring: Jack Gunter and Robert Oneal started the course in 1984 to teach the open approach, and it has run every year since, held its 43rd meeting in March 2026, and produced the textbook the field taught from. It is the clearest example in this history of how a technique spreads: by a room, a faculty and a repeated date rather than by a paper.
What the meeting did to the operation
Three things that happened because the course existed.
It turned one paper into a national practice
Gunter and Rohrich published the external approach for secondary rhinoplasty in 1987, three years after the course began. A paper reaches the people who read that journal; a course reaches the people who will operate on Monday, and then reaches them again the following year with the corrections. By the time the open-versus-closed argument was printed in Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery in 1997, a generation of American plastic surgeons had already been taught the open approach in Dallas. What that argument looks like in the published evidence now is on open versus closed.
Rests on: Rohrich, PRS 2018 · Gunter and Rohrich, PRS 1987 (PMID 3602167).
It produced a textbook and a shared vocabulary
Dallas Rhinoplasty: Nasal Surgery by the Masters (Gunter, Rohrich and Adams), now in its fourth edition, is the course in book form; the graft nomenclature paper of 2006 came out of the same circle. Component dorsal hump reduction, taking the hump apart in its separate layers instead of off in one pass, was published by Rohrich in 2004 and taught at the meeting from there. The techniques on this site's surgery pages are largely the ones this lineage named.
Rests on: the meeting's own publication list · Rohrich et al., PRS 2004 (PMID 15457053).
It changed with the argument rather than defending its own position
The course was founded to teach the open approach. Its 2026 programme lists preservation rhinoplasty, the movement that argues for not dismantling the dorsum at all, alongside nasal analysis, tip shaping, lateral wall and alar rim work, advanced septal surgery and dorsal refinement, taught by faculty from Toronto, Istanbul, Dallas, Newport Beach, Palo Alto and Los Angeles. A meeting that had hardened into its founding technique would have been left behind by the literature it helped create; what that literature says now is in preservation.
Rests on: the 2026 programme and faculty list.
The record
| Year | What is documented | Source |
|---|---|---|
| 1979 | Gunter is chief resident in plastic surgery at Michigan; Rohrich is an intern on his service | Rohrich, PRS 2018 |
| 1984 | First Dallas Rhinoplasty Course, Gunter with Robert Oneal | Rohrich, PRS 2018 |
| 1984–86 | Early faculty: Steve Byrd, John Tebbetts, Robert Sheffield | Rohrich, PRS 2018 |
| 1986 | Rohrich joins UT Southwestern and the faculty | Rohrich, PRS 2018 |
| 1987 | Gunter and Rohrich publish the external approach for secondary rhinoplasty | PMID 3602167 |
| 1991 | Rohrich becomes chair of plastic surgery at UT Southwestern | Secondary biography |
| 2004 | Component dorsal hump reduction published | PMID 15457053 |
| 2016 | 33rd Annual Dallas Rhinoplasty Symposium, listed under UT Southwestern CME | UTSW CME, course RP1603C |
| 2017 | Gunter dies; the Jack P. Gunter Distinguished Lecture continues in the programme | PRS obituary; meeting programme |
| 2026 | 43rd Annual Dallas Rhinoplasty Meeting, 20–22 March, Westin Galleria Dallas, chaired by Rod Rohrich | PR Newswire, 2026 |
2026 rhinoplasty faculty: Jamil Ahmad (Toronto), Spencer Cochran (Dallas), Teoman Dogan (Istanbul), Ashkan Ghavami (Beverly Hills), Aaron Kosins (Newport Beach), Sam Most (Palo Alto), Froilan Paez, Jason Roostaeian (Los Angeles).
What is disputed
- The founding year. Rohrich's memoir says the first course was in 1984; the meeting's own numbering (43rd in 2026) has been read both ways, and some press material implies 1983. This site uses 1984, the primary source.
- Attendance. The 2026 release says the meeting "has educated tens of thousands of surgeons worldwide"; an earlier release said over 20,000; Rohrich's memoir credits Gunter personally with more than 10,000. All three are the organisers' figures. None is independently auditable, and this site prints them as claims.
- Robert Oneal, the co-founder, has no biography on this site yet. The meeting's own history says little about him.
The papers this rests on
- Gunter JP, Rohrich RJ. External approach for secondary rhinoplasty. Plast Reconstr Surg 1987;80:161–174. PMID 3602167
- Rohrich RJ, Muzaffar AR, Janis JE. Component dorsal hump reduction: the importance of maintaining dorsal aesthetic lines in rhinoplasty. Plast Reconstr Surg 2004;114:1298–1308. PMID 15457053
- Gunter JP, Landecker A, Cochran CS. Nomenclature of rhinoplasty grafts. Plast Reconstr Surg 2006. PMID 16816668
- Rohrich RJ. Jack Gunter, M.D.: a man of passion and a true friend. Plast Reconstr Surg 2018;141(2):537–540.
Written by rhinoplasty.cc from the sources linked above, 2026-09-09.