CLINICAL EXPERIENCES OF NASAL TIP PLASTY IN ORIENTALS

ABSTRACT

The nasal tips of Orientals are different from those of caucasians with are characterized by flat nose and bulbous nasal tip appearance because of its thick and tense skin, shory columella, flaring of nostrils, and restriction of nasal tip projection due to underdevelopement of medial crus of alar cartilage. For better nasal tip definition and projection, alar carilage must be realigned and tip might be augmented with autogenous cartilage onlay graft. Furthermore in patient with short columella, strut formation might be performed because the nostril comprises two-thirds of height of nasal tip. If the nasal tip is prjected without lengthening of columella, sometimes we noted unnaturally tented appearance of nasal tip may result. Also for the soft tissue lengthening in columella in proportion to the nasal tip projection, the short columella can be lengthened with columella based V-Y advancement. Surgical approach through alar rim incision or open rhinoplasty incision may be employed depending upon the severity of tip defomity. If flattening is severe to enough require lengthening of the columella, open rhinoplasty incision is the best choice. Through the incision, the alar cartilage is dissected freely from the skin and vestibulsr mucosa. Cartilage grafts are performed using carilage onlay graft or columella strut formation after transdormal fixation suture. This study presents clinical cases of various nasal tips in the view of nasal tip deformity which were corrected with various operative methods using combined technique of approximating the alar cartilage and a multilayered autogenous onlay cartilage graft on the nasal tip harvested from the auricular cartilage, also Silicone implant was used for augmetation of nasal dorsum and columella strut formation with columella base V-Y advancement. The ten years of our experience with nasal tip plasty in over one hundred patient showed excellent result and no complications were observed during post operative follow-up so we are reporting these cases with review of literature.