Finesse Female Ethnic Rhinoplasty
One of my favorite operations to perform is ethnic rhinoplasty. I love this procedure because it requires so much preoperative consideration as well as technical execution in the operating room.
I thought this was a particularly notable case example of a young, ethnic female rhinoplasty patient who desired reshaping of her nose. Specifically, she desired to have a more narrow bridge contour in addition to lifting and refining the nasal tip region. All the while, she wanted to preserve her baseline ethnic appearance.
Clinical Assessment
On her frontal view, you can see that she clearly has an ethnic face with moderately strong ethnic facial features. If you look closer at her nose, you can appreciate that her nasal tip does appear somewhat flat across (red line) and the bridge looks moderately wide (blue lines).
On her oblique, or 45 degree angle, view, one can see that her nasal bridge does appear slightly long for her face (red line). Overall, I would agree that her length issue is not real dramatic. But the nose is slightly elongated.
On her side, or lateral, view, this length issue becomes even more visually evident. As you can see, her nasolabial angle (yellow lines) is just under 90 degrees. If you remember from our Rhinoplasty Tutorial Nasal Analysis chapter, the nasolabial angle is ideally more open than this – in the range of 95-105 degrees in a female patient. In this particular case, the patient desired to have this angle opened slightly in the process of creating a shorter looking nose from the oblique and side views.
Finesse Ethnic Rhinoplasty
So why do I describe this case as being a finesse type of ethnic rhinoplasty? This is because, generally speaking, her nose is really not all that bad in terms of appearance. She did not desire nor seek out a major transformation of her nose. She simply wanted to narrow a little here and refine a little there – while trying to keep the nose looking consistent with her background ethnic facial features. This does not mean that only finesse maneuvers were performed during her rhinoplasty surgery. The surgery still required all the work that normally goes into cosmetic nose surgery – incisions, lifting the skin, reshaping the cartilage, etc. The goal, however, was to perform all the usual surgical maneuvers while reshaping the nose in a way to achieve finesse changes.
Finesse Rhinoplasty Procedure
I ended up performing an open cosmetic rhinoplasty procedure on this patient. As part of the nose reshaping process, I cut her lower lateral cartilages and moved them to a more desirable position. I used a technique called lateral crural overlay, which happens to be a common maneuver used to shorten a nose. In doing so, I was able to bring her nasal tip upward slightly while also creating more tip definition. At the same time, I performed medial and lateral osteotomies to narrow the upper bridge. Finally, I used a small piece of her own cartilage as a graft to further refine the nasal tip region.
As noted above, this type of finesse rhinoplasty surgery still required a full effort in terms of general anesthesia, surgical exposure of the nasal framework, and reshaping of the individual components of the nose. I also still required a full year of recovery as does almost all types of cosmetic rhinoplasty surgery. But the end result visually was intended to be more of a finesse type of change.
Finesse Rhinoplasty Results
The actual surgical results are shown below. As you can see, there have finesse changes in terms of the appearance of her nose. She still looks like herself, just with a more refined version of her old nose. She now has improved tip position with a more defined looking nasal tip. In addition, the nasal bridge has been narrowed slightly as a result of the osteotomies. Her nose is also now slightly shorter when measured from the nasal tip to the area between the eyes. Yet, overall she still looks natural.
Finesse Rhinoplasty Consult
If you are considering a finesse rhinoplasty procedure, contact my office staff today to schedule a personalized appointment to see what might be possible with your nose.