Introduction

Having a blocked nose is very common. Blocked nose (nasal obstruction) causes you to have problems with breathing through your nose either all the time or only at night. It is also common that the side where the nose is blocked changes over time. You may also notice that your nostril collapses on one side and may find yourself stretching that side of your cheek against the pillow at night to improve your breathing.

Causes of a blocked nose

There are many causes of a blocked nose including:

• The way your nose has grown.
• Age (Age causes drooping of the nose which causes a blocked nose).
• Previously breaking your nose.
• Earlier nasal surgery.
• Nasal polyps.
• Earlier skin cancer excision.
• Allergy (Allergic rhinitis).

Blocked noses can also be much worse if you need to wear a CPAP mask.

Treatment

Almost all causes of a blocked nose can be treated or improved. To determine what the cause of your blocked nose is you will need to be seen by Dr Robinson. He may recommend a rhinoplasty for the treatment of a blocked nose.

The procedure is different for everyone but in general, involves the following steps:

• Septoplasty (Straighten cartilage in the middle of the nose).
• Cartilage harvest for grafting.
• Turbinoplasty (reducing scrolls of tissue inside the nose).
• Structural cartilage grafting to nose to support septum.
• Structural tip cartilage grafting to fix a drooping nose.
• Structural cartilage grafting to side walls of the nose.

Over 30% of the patients that Dr Dan Robinson operates on are revisions – where the patient has had an operation by another surgeon prior to seeing Dr Robinson. When this is the case, Dr Robinson almost always uses rib grafts to reconstruct the nose.

When Dr Dan Robinson audited his own results, he found that over 97% of patients had an improvement in breathing through their nose, regardless of whether they were revisions or not. This data was presented at the annual Australian ENT Society meeting.

Gallery

You can view before and after patient photos of Blocked Nose in the Functional Rhinoplasty Gallery.

Related Information

Functional Rhinoplasty

To discuss fixing your blocked nose, please make an appointment with Dr Dan Robinson.