Surgery for ‘wonky’ nose helps patients to breathe

PATIENTS with ‘wonky’ noses that cause difficulty breathing should be offered plastic surgery on the NHS, a study suggests.

The problem, known as a deviated nasal septum, is caused when one nasal passage is narrower than the other. It can occur naturally or might be caused by an injury to the nose.

Celebrities including Friends star Jennifer Aniston, pictured below, and Hollywood actress Cameron Diaz claim to have undergone nose jobs in order to remedy this issue, rather than for cosmetic reasons.

While about 60 per cent of the population has some form of deviated septum, only those with the most severe problems that interfere with breathing need treatment.

First-line treatments are cheap steroid drug sprays which reduce swelling in the nose. Only if this proves ineffective is surgery offered.

But until now it has been unclear how much more effective surgery is than drugs. Experts say this lack of data has led to a postcode lottery, where severely affected patients in some areas are not offered the op.

The study, published in the British Medical Journal, involved about 400 people with a deviated septum.

Half of them received a septoplasty, a surgical procedure which takes about 30 minutes and involves removing and repositioning tissue and some bone in the nose. The other half received a daily nasal steroid spray.

Six months after treatment, patients completed the Sino-Nasal Outcome Test-22 – aptly nicknamed SNOT-22 – which assesses 22 symptoms of a deviated nasal septum. The researchers found that patients who underwent surgery experienced half as many symptoms on average as those who used the steroid sprays.

‘A deviated septum doesn’t just impact your breathing,’ says Mr Sean Carrie, a nose expert at Newcastle University and lead author of the study, ‘it can also impact the quality of your sleep, which can have serious health implications over time.

‘We’re hopeful our findings will ensure that patients who need surgery can get it, while those with a more mild form of the problem can avoid an unneeded surgical procedure.’