Mrinal Supriya discusses if noses keep growing throughout our lives and if that impacts rhinoplasty results

Laura Livesey: I thought that noses continued to grow throughout our lives and so wouldn’t that impact a rhinoplasty result?

Mrinal Supriya: I think this question arises from the general observation that in many older people, the nose looks much bigger compared to what it was on their face a few decades back.

The problem here is not that the nose has grown. It is because the rest of the facial skeleton has shrunk down a little bit.

For example, the jaw bone will lose a significant percentage of its height when you are old. The soft tissue of your face droops down. So in effect, the soft tissue that you have around your nose shrink and droop down, which makes the nose appear a bit bigger and much more aberrant.

It is not because of the growth of the nose that you have this appearance. It is because the nose had been static, but the rest of your facial skeleton and the soft tissue has dropped down and lost some volume.