“I wanted to get to a couple of questions today on rhinoplasty. We’ve done a series of rhinoplasty here in the winter. I guess people have had a little time to recover during the holiday break and there was some good ones that I think apply to everyone.
One that I see commonly is that patients will ask about nostril flare or width of the nostrils, and there are number of techniques described and its really beyond this little video to talk about all these techniques, although I will include them in some drawings and demonstrations of how the alar or nostril base can be reduced or modified so that it looks appropriate and it’s proportional to the rest of the nose.
Suffice to say, that when we’re doing alar base or nostril base reduction, it is extremely important to keep the very nice curvature of the outside part of the nose or the nostril, intact. We call this the ala and by rotating the ala inward toward the center portion of the face, we’re able to maintain that very nice curvature.
There are number of techniques that take out wedges and other things that make the nostril look very straight up and down. Michael Jackson was a very good example of the wedge technique, which just looks very unnatural.
So I would summarize by just letting everyone know that’s interested in alar based reduction or narrowing the nose that it’s very important preserve the curvature of the ala, and I’ll describe those techniques in some detail later in a slight presentation we’re doing.”
