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Why Does Skin Thickness Matter for Nose Surgery?
How does the thickness of my skin affect the results of my rhinoplasty surgery?
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How does skin thickness affect Rhinoplasty results?
I have performed Rhinoplasty for over 20 years and this is a great question. The thicker, the nasal skin, the less a sculpted tip underneath this thick skin can show through. Thin skin shows every detail of a sculted, thin tip that's created during Rhinoplasty while thick skin will not. The subcutaneous tissues can be thinned but there's another difficult aspect of thick, especially thick and oily skin. This type of skin has a tendency to create...
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Rhinoplasty results vary significantly depending on skin thickness
Skin quality and thickness is one of the most important factors in determining your final Rhinoplasty result. And it can also be one of the hardest to predict.
When we perform Rhinoplasty, most of what we do involves altering the cartilage and bone that makes up the nasal skeleton. We shape the cartilage and bone in many ways to take on the new desired contour. During the healing period for many months after surgery, the skin and soft tissue that lays over this skeleton must contract inwards...
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Beverly Hills Facial Plastic Surgeon
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Thickness will affect the results
Overlying nasal skin quality and thickness are probably the most important fact that patient and surgeon must carefully evaluate prior to surgery. Both "limit" situations (too thin or too thick skin and soft tissue layer) are not good when planning a rhinoplasty (they affect adversely). So definitely this fact will affect the results of a rhinoplasty surgery. Obviously it will depend on the amount of cartilaginous and bone structures planned to be altered (removed) during the nose...
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Effect of skin thickness on rhinoplasty results
The way that I describe the effect of skin thickness on rhinoplasty results is to use the analogy of a down comforter versus a fine Egyption cotton sheet. A thick comforter lying over an object makes it difficult to see the shape of the object while a thin sheet allows one to see every edge and contour.
The underlying cartilage and bony structure of the nose will show through easily in thin-skinned patients which allows for increased refinement of the nose. However, it is critical to...
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Bay Area Facial Plastic Surgeon
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Skin Thickness Matters!
In most Rhinoplasty, the surgeon reshapes the nose by reshaping the skeleton of cartilage and bone.
This framework of support for the nose shapes the overlying nasal skin.
Imagine covering a chair with a fine silk cloth: you'll see every angle f the chair and easily discern it's shape.
Now cover the chair with a rug: the result is amount that may not even look like a chair.
In this analogy, thin skin is like the silk cloth and thick skin is like the rug.
How...
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Understanding Skin Thickness is Vital in Rhinoplasty
Skin thickness is important because it can adversely affect the final result of your nose surgery, if not taken into account by your surgeon. The skin of the nose varies in thickness from the bridge, where it is generally thin, to the tip and nostrils, where it can become thicker. Some ethnicities tend to have thicker skin on the nose than others.
Thick skin can limit the amount of narrowing or refinement one can obtain in the tip of the nose. On the other hand, it can also disguise...
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Austin Facial Plastic Surgeon
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Skin Thickness and Rhinoplasty Results
The type and thickness of a patient's skin can have a big impact on the rhinoplasty results. For thick-skinned patients, the postoperative swelling can be more pronounced and can persist longer. Additionally, with very thick skin, the tip may not be as refined appearing. Thin-skinned patients run the risk of have visible irregularity of the tip cartilages (if they are modified).
Dallas Facial Plastic Surgeon
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Skin thickness affecting outcome of rhinoplasty
Fantastic question! The thickness of the skin contributes to the appearance of the postoperative nose even after bony work has been performed. Drape corduroy over a pencil and then try it with silk. Huge difference! The nasal tip can be defatted to achieve a more defined appearance.
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Skin thickness and rhinoplasty - nose job
Skin thickness is an essential component of evaluation for rhinoplasty. Thick skin will take longer to contract over the cartilaginous/bony framework and will limit how much smaller one can make the nose. Think of a comforter (thick skin) wrapped tightly around a statue. You would not be able to delineate the details of the statue very well. Now think of a bed sheet (thin skin) wrapped tightly around it. Those details are now more apparent. Thick skinned...
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Houston Facial Plastic Surgeon
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Rhinoplasty and Skin Thickness
Rhinoplasty can change bone, cartilage, and the soft tissue including skin. Thin skin can show more tip definition as a positive yet can allow more imperfections of underlying bone or cartilage to become apparent, In order to correct for situations, the surgeon may opt to add padding with fascia or crushed cartliage to soften certain areas. In thicker skin, the surgeon may opt to thin the skin in order to allow highlights of the cartilage...
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Bay Area Facial Plastic Surgeon
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Skin thickness and rhinoplasty
The thicker the skin the more difficult it is to see the definition of refined structures that were altered during surgery.
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Skin thickness in rhinoplasty
When performing rhinoplasty, it is important to take skin thickness into consideration. The best way to illustrate this is with an example. If you have a diamond ring and I cover it with a fine silk sheet, you will likely see the shape transmitted through the sheet. If, however, you cover it with a comforter, you are not likely to see anytning other than possibly a small bump. The same goes for your nose.
see video
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Skin Thickness and Rhinoplasty
The thickness of the nasal skin plays a major role in the ultimate result that can be achieved, especially with the nasal tip where skin characteristics tend to vary the most from patient to patient. The skin of the nasal tip contains varying amounts of sebaceous glands, fatty tissue, dermis, and connective tissue. Redraping of this skin over the underlying cartilages of the nasal tip determines how much detail will ultimately be appreciated when swelling has resolved....
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Chicago Plastic Surgeon
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Skin thickness changes the shape of you final nose
I frequently tell my patients that everything has plusses and minuses. You can thin of skin as wrapping paper over the underlying cartilage framework. Thin skin allows excellent definition of detail structures. However, the other side of that is that every miniscule irregularity will clearly be visible under the skin envelope. Thick skin allows excellent camouflage of miniscule irregularities. But things like tip definition become very hard. Not...
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Skin thickness matters in Rhinoplasty
Skin matters when it comes down to nasal surgery. As a surgeon you can fine tune the cartilages of the nose , but if the skin is very thick it will not show through in the final outcome. Cartilage grafts may be needed to accentuate the tip definition when a patient has thicker skin. The skin thickness may be changed by "de-fatting" the skin or injecting small amounts of steroids into the thick skin area. If you have thick skin make sure you discuss your concerns...
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Miami Facial Plastic Surgeon
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Skin and rhinoplasty
The nasal skin determines the limits of how big or small it can be made. The limit is based on the soft tissue envelope of the nose (the skin). Imagine the skin of the nose being like a dress, and the underlying nasal structure like a person's body. If you placed too small of a body on a thick, large dress, you would have excess material. Likewise, in a rhinoplasty making the nose too small can lead to a pollybeak deformity where excess bulk is seen in the tip. A surgeon with...
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Chicago Facial Plastic Surgeon
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Skin Thickness and Rhinoplasty
This is a a good question. Skin thickness affects the outcome of rhinoplasty. The thicker the skin more difficult it is to see the finer corrections of rhinoplasty. Example, it difficult to produce a thin well sculptured tip because the thick covers up the finely sculpted tip.
Dr. ES
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Skin thickness is a key factor in rhinoplasty
The thickness of the skin plays a large factor in rhinoplasty results. In essence a rhinoplasty reshapes the tissues under the skin to change the appearance of the nose. If the skin is too thick the underlying changes will not be seen through the thick skin. If the skin is too thin every underlying cut or imperfection will be visible under the skin. The rhinoplasty surgeon must be experienced in all skin types to determine what techniques will best work with the particular skin type.
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Toronto Facial Plastic Surgeon
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Skin Thickness in Rhinoplasty
Thicker skin hides contours and redrapes differently over the fine cartilage structure that are sculpted at the time of Rhinoplasty. I use this analogy with my patients:
In the summer, you sleep with a single sheet on your bed, which when covering your feet, shows the outlines of all of your toes and you can see and count them all. (Thin skin, sculpted, defined anatomy)
In the winter, when it is cold, you sleep with a thicker comforter to keep you warm, which when draped over...
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Skin thickness and rhinoplasty
The best analogy i ever heard concerning rhinoplasty is the constructing of a tent. First you erect the tent poles and then you lay the tarp over the poles and you have a certain structure of a tent. If you change the tent poles ( i.e. the cartilage and bone) you have a different tent. If you change the thickness of the tarp you will get a similar tent but more or less well defined, based o the thickness of the tarp. Looking at noses of models in...
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Skin thickeness matters in rhinoplasty.
If the skin is thick, then the changes to the underlying cartilage and bony structures cant be appreciated. So the improvement is limited. The skin cant redrape well.
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Quality of nasal skin and final results in rhinoplasty
It is important for the surgeon to asses the quality of your nasal skin to achieve optimum results in rhinoplasty. With experience and innate talent the surgeon learns to pick a specific technique for each skin type. In patients with thicker nasal skin I would use special techniques ( various grafts, less reductive maneuvers, more re-balancing of nasal aesthetics) that would not be used in someone with thin skin. The final goal is the same, a balanced,...
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Rhinoplasty and Skin Thickness
Essentially, rhinoplasty involves sculpting the bones and cartilage, then relying on the cover (the skin) to redrape through which the results can be seen. Thicker skin does not contract as much, and the advantages of thicker skin is that small irregularities won’t show through, but it will be more difficult to achieve a more refined, well defined tip.
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Skin thickness and rhinoplasty results
The changes made under the skin of the nose (bone and cartilage) during a rhinoplasty will not be as easily seen with thicker skin. On the other hand, thinner skin will more likely show very small irregularities and imperfections. The differences may be similar to you looking at your fingers by placing a thin silk hanky over one hand and a piece of burlap over your other hand.
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Thickness of skin and rhinoplasty
Rhinoplasty is a popular and effective surgery to recontour the shape of your nose. The thickness of your skin is an important factor that your surgeon will take into account. Patients with thick skin will be more of a challenge to create definition of the underlying framework. In our practice, we commonly addressed this by removing a small amount of fat under the skin, using small pieces of cartilage graft to help enhance the definition, or other techniques.
In our practice, we find the...
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