The nasal dorsum as a donor site for the correction of alar, lobular, and columellar malformations

There is a wide variety of donor sites available for minor nasal reconstructions involving alar, lobular, and columellar defects. Unfortunately, the problems all these sites have in common are that the color match may be unsatisfactory or that the end result may be marred by conspicuous scarring. If nasal-skin resources could be fully exploited, the elimination of these two important problems could become an obtainable goal. This article discusses the potential of the nasal dorsum as a donor site and describes methods that were used to try to achieve this goal. Skin redistribution, skin expansion, and skin distraction methods were used in 28 patients with alar (n = 13), lobular (n = 8), and columellar (n = 7) malformations andwho had been followed up since the early 1980s.