I keep hearing that patients of ethnicity have thicker skin and that special techniques need to be used for rhinoplasty, but what are these special techniques?

In ethnic rhinoplasty, some patients may have thicker skin.  Patients with thicker nasal skin pose a challenge to achieve refinement of the nasal tip.  There are some special techniques we use to achieve refinement of the nasal tip in the thicker nasal skin.  One of those techniques include using sutures to reshape the original nasal tip cartilages.  If this technique does not achieve refinement, then we use tip grafts.  Tip grafts are made of cartilage that is obtained from the patient’s nasal septum.  The tip grafts are sutured to the original nasal tip cartilages to further achieve refinement.