Rhinoplasty #287

Our beautiful patient is seen before, and one month after, rhinoplasty surgery for severe dissatisfaction with her nasal appearance. Her case is somewhat unusual, since she had septoplasty and endoscopic sinus surgery performed by another doctor, which resulted in loss of support of her nasal tip, along with an indentation in her low nasal bridge. You can see in her before photo that she has a divot above her tip, and this is associated with a droopy tip and a dorsal hump. On front view, she had a bit of a wide appearance in the lower 1/3 of her nose, and there were some visible irregularities along her upper bridge.

When I examined her, I noticed that she did not have adequate nasal septal cartilage remaining for grafting purposes, so we purchased a sheet of MTF Profile cartilage for reconstruction. She required a columella strut graft to support her tip and improve the appearance of her retracted columella, and we also placed spreader grafts on both sides to open up her internal nasal valves. You can see that we deprojected her nasal profile appearance, rotated her tip upward, and removed her dorsal hump.

At only one month postoperative, she still appears swollen and wide on front view, and she has a bit of nostril asymmetry because there is more swelling involving her right nostril compared to her left. This will naturally get better over the ensuing several months. After rhinoplasty surgery, patience is a virtue, since it takes at least 12 months for all swelling to dissipate. This is one of the many reasons why we advocate keeping your rhinoplasty specialist close to home, since small irregularities tend to be magnified by long distances.