AFRICAN AMERICAN RHINOPLASTY

African American represents a wide range of nasal appearances.  Many patients seeking rhinoplasty of African American origin will describe desiring more definition to the nasal tip, a narrower alar base, and sometimes augmntation to the nasal bridge.

Often times the lower lateral cartilages or underlying structural support to the nose, is soft.  By increasing support to the nose, often times the patient is able to achieve improved nasal tip definition. 

Alar base reduction is a complex procedure where the bottom portion of the nose is reduced.  Often times this will require an external incision.  While patients of African American origin may worry about keloid formation in other areas of the body, its appearance around the nose is exceedingly rare.  The alar base reduction will also help to reduce the overall size of the bottom of the nose and improve the balance with the rest of the face.

Figure 1.  Patient who requested augmentation of nose in an effort for more definition of nasal tip and bridge.  Alar base reduction was not performed.

Figure 2.  Patient had alar base reduction in an effort to make nose less wide.  In addition, patient's nose was rebalanced so that nose was less bottom heavy and tip subtlely refined.