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Good morning and today we are going to discuss a question that many patients have about rhinoplasty. And that is what are spreader grafts. You may have heard of it, you may have not but if you’re going to seek a rhinoplasty consultation you may hear about it. Well in order to answer that question we need to first ask and learn a little bit about nasal anatomy. Well the nose is made up of a top third middle third and a bottom third tip. The middle third is composed of cartilage, cartilage bends like your ear but if bent too far it can break.

In the mid third of the nose is made of cartilage that is horizontal here and then vertical, like this. It is very responsible for the ability to breathe in, comfortably and prevent nasal obstruction. If this width the horizontal part is too narrow you may have problems breathing, therefore after rhinoplasty that width can potentially become too narrow. In order to make it more wide we can insert a graft, a piece of your own cartilage. We can insert that between the strut here and the side wall, therefore widening that area. That technique is called inserting a spreader graft and I hope that answers your question today.