In a ground breaking study just published in the prestigious Annals of Plastic Surgery, Dr. Oleh Slupchynskyj, Founder and Director of The Aesthetic Facial Surgery Institute of New York and New Jersey, statistically demonstrates a new anatomic landmark in the subnasal vertex view offers an improved means of characterizing the bulbous tip post operatively in nonwhite patients during Ethnic Rhinoplasty Surgery.
The nose is the central feature of the face and can enhance or detract from one’s overall facial aesthetics. Throughout history, Rhinoplasty, commonly know as a Nose Job, has been an aesthetic procedure mostly targeted toward the caucasian population. With increasing immigration and rising socioeconomic status of ethnic populations, Rhinoplasty has significantly expanded to include nonwhite ethnicities.
The bulbous tip, a common nasal tip of ethnic populations who seek Rhinoplasty, presents a wide and rounded tip with a thick sebaceous epidermal-dermal layer, excess fibrofatty tissue, weak lower lateral cartilages and weak tip support.
“Refinement of the bulbous nasal tip continues to be one of the most challenging aspects in ethnic rhinoplasty,” Dr. Slupchynskyj reports. The basic repair of the bulbous tip works to rectify the all stated problems, however it has been well established that a new standard needed to be created for assessing ethnic differences in the pre and post-operative phases of Ethnic Rhinoplasty.
“The goal was to create a method that can be used to objectively establish a reduction in tip bulbosity of postoperative nonwhite rhinoplasty patients,” Dr. Slupchynskyj states.
In this study, an institutional review board-approved retrospective analysis of 44 nonwhite patients was undertaken. Post operative photographs in the subnasal vertex view were subjected to analysis. All patients underwent an open approach Rhinoplasty that included nasal tip defatting and cartilage graft placement.
Using a polygonal construct, that included the new anatomic landmark in conjunction with established landmarks described by Farkas et al, angles, distances and areal indices were measured from the preoperative and postoperative photographs. A comparison was then made for statistical significance.
