Does the columella tend to drop similar to the nose tip dropping during healing post rhinoplasty?

Wow. I couldn’t have said it better myself. If a long nose is shortened it does tend to drop back down during the months after rhinoplasty. Unfortunately many surgeons don’t do anything to shorten the nose which is why many rhinoplasties look too long afterwards. Or they have what is called a hanging columella. If a nose is very long I take steps to overcorrect the long nose because I know it will drop down

Dear Bambi'sBusiness,

Thankyou for your question! To answer your question, it really depends on the technique used in your surgery, the columella appearance may also change due to gravity effects. Although, this is a normal appearance for the columella and the tip to be higher but after cast removal procedure which settles by time. I am attaching a link for before and after if you would like to look deeper into the procedure and what to expect.

Regards,
TAS TEAM

Columella may have different presentation before rhinoplasty and that should be corrected with rhinoplasty. Usually elevation and rotation of tip would streighten columella; retracted columella may need different approach. These are issues that you need to discuss with your surgeon ahead of surgery based on your own situation. Hope this helps. Good luck.

When performing a rhinoplasty, the surgeon does take into account the current and future change of the nasal tip. As you correctly noted, the nasal tip does tend to droop with aging. Therefore, measures to stabilize this are performed to counteract this. The columella doesn't tend to sag independently of the nasal tip.

Does the Columella drop along with the tip postop? good question. It is variable. in some cases particularly if the pre-operative columella was a “hanging columella“ it may tend to drop overtime in the postoperative period compared to the early appearance when the cast was first removed. However if a patient had a retruded columella preoperatively or a tendency toward that, it will probably keep that appearance Postop and may even look more retruded if the tip drops without the Columella dropping. A lot depends on the preoperative condition and also what means of support was given to the tip and columella at surgery.