Sinus Woe
The road to from bad breathing to rhinoplasty and other nasal surgery often begins with complaints about what seem to be sinusitis woe.
For instance, blogger turbinatevictim filed comments on ehealth.com forum about using Afrin for three years to overcome four years of problem breathing. She wondered if she had become addicted.(Afrin is an over-the-counter nasal spray that opens the nasal passages and is frequently used by people who think they may suffer from sinusitis.)
(Read more about sinusitis masking the need for other nasal surgery, including for a deviated septum and turbinate reduction surgery.)
Actually, long-term Afrin users don’t become truly addicted.(Continued below.)
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Below left: a Kotler Nasal Airway (KNA) in place after nasal surgery. Right, the KNA before insertion.
Kotlerl Nasal Airway
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(Continued.)True addiction happens when, say, narcotic addicts get the shakes, cold sweats and vomiting when their drug is stopped. But overuse of Afrin could become a dependency because of what seems like frequent bouts of sinusitis and a permanently congested nose.
Many rhinoplasty patients, when the inside of their noses are examined for the first time by a ENT (Ears, Nose and Throat specialist) discover that, not sinus problems, but a deviated septum or, in turbinatevictim’s case, enlarged turbinates are the real culprits. The patient can go ahead with the nose job and also have the internal nasal surgery that allows more healthy breathing. All in the same surgical session. (Read her experience with turbinate reduction surgery.)
After turbinate reduction, turbinatevictim was five days post-op while penning her impressions of surgery.
Most patients like her have nasal packing, an important medical step just after surgery; the packing helps hold everything inside the nose in place, soak up any bleeding and deliver important medications.
But, in the words of another patient who had nasal packing, “It feels like a giant clothes pin is on your nose.” Plus, nasal packing requires mouth breathing. Yet another would-be rhinoplasty patient bolted from the room when he discovered his badly managed, unattractive nose would have packing after rhinoplasty revision.
But there is a way around it that satisfies both medical needs and patient comfort: the Kotler Nasal Airway (KNA). The device is simply two slim, hollow tubes inserted inside the nose, just after a surgery that corrects breathing or cosmetic surgery on the nose.
The device is anchored at the nasal tip so it can’t be ingested by the patient. Once the KNA is firmly in place, the surgeon places the nasal packing around it.