One of the more common requests we get here in Orange County and Costa Mesa is to make the tip of the nose smaller. In the past, making the tip smaller often involved removing a portion of the tip cartilage. Nowadays, a large number of tips are made smaller by removing very little of the tip cartilage and sometimes none!
Instead, what expert plastic surgeons are now doing is re-sculpting, reshaping, and reposition the tip cartilage without removing much if any of the cartilage. Take for example, a nose with a broad bulbous tip, if the cartilage don’t meet at the midline, skilled plastic surgeons can remove small parts of the cartilages, but also change the angle of the tip cartilage so that the domes are made more acute or nicer. Today there are numerous options to modify the tip of the nose without removing significant amounts of cartilage.
Here in Costa Mesa we do a great number of rhinoplasties to improve breathing. Breathing problems have a lot of different causes but repair of a deviated septum is probably the most common. Dr. Sajjadian gets many referrals from other plastic surgeons for Rhinoplasty procedures. Occasionally clients will come in with compromised valves, and spreader grafts are used to maintain the internal valves of the nose. Sometimes breathing may be actually be compromised by a rhinoplasty that reduces the size of the nose and the spreader grafts are used to keep them open. Frequently we will also alter the inferior turbinates to help open up the airways. If a nasal tip implant is used, some noses need cartilage grafts to support the nasal tip and prevent the nostrils from collapsing.
People are often a little taken aback when we tell them that occasionally we will need to break the nose during rhinoplasty. Breaking the nose during rhinoplasty is necessary in probably 90% of rhinoplasties. It is done to lower the profile of the nose by reducing the width of the base of the nose. Of course this is all done while the individual is under anesthesia so no one actually feels their nose being “broken.”
Follow up for rhinoplasty continues for about a year, minimum. Most of the swelling from a rhinoplasty will go down in the first two weeks and the nose will look good but all swelling can take about one year to go away completely. It’s important to us that we follow our Costa Mesa clients regularly to document the improvements and make sure any complications or concerns are addressed as quickly as possible.
If you have any additional questions about Newport Beach rhinoplasty and the latest trends in plastic surgery, contact Dr. Ali Sajjadian’s Newport Beach plastic surgery office today!