Narrowing and Operated Appearance of the Middle Nasal Third after Hump Resection without Middle Vault Reconstruction.

[BACKGROUND] Little is known about the incidence of narrowing and an operated appearance of the dorsum after hump resections if the dorsum is not reconstructed with spreader grafts or spreader flaps.

[METHODS] Patients who had undergone a composite hump resection (n = 22) or a component hump resection (n = 25) were interviewed and photographed with a minimum follow-up of 12 months. Four expert rhinoplasty surgeons and four laypersons rated the appearance of the middle third of the dorsum on the preoperative and postoperative en face photographs. The quartile of the most surgical appearing outcomes was analyzed regarding potentially preventive surgical maneuvers.

[RESULTS] No patient was dissatisfied with the frontal view of the nose. Agreement between expert and lay raters (Kendall's coefficient of concordance) was 0.51 (p < 0.01) and 0.34 (p = 0.06) for appearance and 0.55 (p < 0.01) and 0.46 (p < 0.01) for width, respectively. Expert raters found that a surgical appearance of the dorsum had both increased and decreased after surgery, with an average increase of 0.27 ± 1.05 and 0.21 ± 1.18 points on a five-point Likert scale for composite and component resection, respectively. Pearson correlation between the degree of dorsal lowering and surgical appearance on the anterior view was 0.31 (p = 0.026). Reconstruction of the middle third could potentially have improved the outcome in 15 percent of the patients.

[CONCLUSIONS] Lowering of the dorsum without middle vault reconstruction on average increased an operated appearance to a small degree that was not noted by the patients. This effect was similar for composite and component hump resections.

[CLINICAL QUESTION/LEVEL OF EVIDENCE] Therapeutic, III.