Causes and Prevention of Secondary Obstruction.

Secondary nasal obstruction occurs when surgery fails to improve a patient's nasal obstruction symptoms. This may occur from failure to recognize a problem preoperatively or failure to address mucocutaneous medical ailments. Secondary obstruction may even occur despite perfect execution of the operative plan. In this article, we discuss the etiology, intraoperative pitfalls, and surgical correction of secondary obstruction after primary rhinoplasty. When managing postrhinoplasty secondary obstruction, care must be taken to correct the cause of obstruction without creating new problems.