Reconstruction of the nasal septum using polydioxanone plate.

Objectives: To evaluate the usefulness of resorbable polydioxanone plate attached to nasal septal cartilage in external septoplasty, to assess its mechanical stability until healing of cartilage fragments, and to describe the surgical technique and clinical experience.

Design: External septoplasty with polydioxanone plate has been performed in 396 patients since 1996. Indications were severe septal deformities (usually posttraumatic).

Morphological and histological findings after typical surgical manipulations on growing septal cartilage in rabbits.

One remaining problem of nose surgery is surgical correction of a prepubertal distortion of the septum. Unfortunately, the growing cartilage reacts differently upon a surgical intervention; in most cases this might cause iatrogenic disturbance of the development. Our clinical and histological studies with polydioxanone (PDS) foil in septal reconstruction showed that the PDS foil successfully prevented postoperative sequelae like dislocation of the reimplanted cartilage fragments and recurrent deviation caused by overlapping of the cartilage borders.

Reconstructive septal surgery.

To attain without compromise the surgical goal, a straight and concurrently solid septum, especially in cases of marked deviations or severe post-traumatic deformities (sometimes combined with external deformities), an excellent proven and well-known technique is extracorporal or external septoplasty. Surgery consists of excision of the quadrilateral cartilage and its division into straight fragments. To avoid postoperative sequelae such as saddling, the pieces of cartilage must be reconnected meticulously to form a straight and at the same time solid plate.

Influence of polydioxanone foil on growing septal cartilage after surgery in an animal model: new aspects of cartilage healing and regeneration (preliminary results).

Objective: To determine whether late complications after septoplasty in growing septal cartilage in children can be prevented by the use of a resorbable polydioxanone (PDS) foil in combination with the cartilage.

Design: Animal study with 45 young rabbits, operated on at the nasal septum. Four typical septoplasty procedures were carried out, including elevation of the mucoperichondrium, cartilage excision, and reimplantation of crushed and noncrushed cartilage; for each of the procedures, resorbable PDS foil was used in half of the animals.