Q. Is it possible to have your first nose surgery without an implant?

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Q. Is it possible to have your first nose surgery without an implant?

A. Yes, it is possible if you do not plan to raise the starting point of the nasal bridge!

In cosmetic rhinoplasty, the procedure can be broadly divided into the tip of the nose and the bridge of the nose.

In many cases, the nose tip is operated on using autologous cartilage, while the bridge is operated on using silicone.

Plastic Surgery: Volume 2: Aesthetic Surgery, Neligan, Elsevier

The illustration above is a simple diagram of cosmetic nose surgery.

You can see that the green section forms the nose tip with autologous cartilage, and the purple section forms the nasal bridge with silicone.

Because implant-free surgery does not use silicone, there are limits to how much the bridge can be raised.

However, because autologous cartilage is used for the nose tip, correction is still possible even in implant-free surgery.

That said, the nose tip cannot be raised to the maximum extent.

A low bridge with only a high tip can look quite unnatural.

Therefore, in implant-free surgery, the tip height is adjusted so that it harmonizes with the existing nasal bridge.

For that reason, people with a dorsal hump are at an advantage when having implant-free surgery.

To explain with a diagram,

In cases like this, where there is a dorsal hump,

The height of the hump is used to imagine a virtual straight line that will form the bridge accordingly.

Then the height of the nose tip is set to match it. (orange line)

The nose tip is then raised using cartilage accordingly (blue shape),

and a gap appears between the hump and the nose tip, which is filled using cartilage. (green hatching)

In this way, by using the hump to raise the nose tip and the bridge below the hump,

even without an implant, the hump can be removed and the overall nose can be made higher, creating a more aesthetically pleasing nose.

Rather than deciding in advance that implant-free surgery will not look good, or that you will only have implant-free surgery,

there are various surgical methods, and each person’s nasal condition is different,

so we recommend consulting with a doctor to carefully decide on the appropriate surgical method.