Mouth Breathing
The darnest things happen when patients inquire about rhinoplasty. Not only do they often complain about the appearance of their noses, but an ensuing nasal exam may reveal their noses are not performing their basic function: breathing.
A healthy person mostly breathes though the nose while resting, sleeping or moving around. During heavy exercise, you breathe through the nose and mouth to get extra oxygen.
But mouth breathing alone is bad news. In children, it can even lead to abnormal facial growth. In adults, mouth breathing can wreak havoc on:
- Oral health
- The gums
- Irritate the tonsils and adenoids
Other possible causes of mouth breathing include allergies, a thick tongue or neck and obesity.
One dead bang giveaway of mouth breathing is a patient who has sleep apnea, snores at night and perhaps uses a CPAP machine, a mask-based device to force air into the lungs past any nasal blockages. He or she may also report “three to five” sinus infections yearly. Actually, true sinusitis is fairly rare while nasal congestion is often mistaken for sinusitis.
Mouth breathers often feel tired during the day and suffer reductions in smell and taste. Some large uvulas dangling in the back of the throat are also breathing bugbears.
Among anatomy checked by a nasal surgeon during a rhinoplasty exam is the septum, that thin, vertical wall of cartilage separating the two nostrils. If the septum is twisted or leans it into either nostril, it could block the air way and cause mouth breathing.
The surgical procedure, septoplasty, returns the septum to its proper position and unblocks the breathing channel. When septoplasty and rhinoplasty are done at once, the procedure is known as septorhinoplasty.
Located in the upper nose are three sets of bony shelves, the turbinates, which are covered with a unique skin, topped by a mucus membrane. The turbinates filter, warm and humidify air on the way to the lungs. (See illlustration, below)
When the sinuses drain and the turbinates are swollen, the patient suffers nasal congestion and again breathes through the mouth.
The skin of the turbinates is unique, found nowhere else in the human body. That particular skin has the ability to swell many times above its normal thickness and reacts to irritants.
To reduce turbinate swelling into the breathing channel, the nasal surgeon removes some of that skin and very slightly reduces some of the turbinate bone.
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Turbinates Location