Removal Of Nasal Packing After Rhinoplasty

There are a lot of old wives' tales circulating about the burdens, discomfort and displeasure of removal of nasal packing after nasal surgery. That procedure may have been purely cosmetic nasal surgery or an operation that involved both changing the appearance externally and improving the breathing and sinus function internally. The internal operation, called nasal septoplasty without or without nasal turbinate reduction, generally tends to have a little greater chance of bleeding. For that reason, the nose tends to be packed a bit more ambitiously to reduce bleeding and stabilize the repaired tissues. The "packing" could be anything from wads of cotton to folded Telfa pads to narrow gauze strips. It may be in place for one to five days.

When the packing is to be removed, it should not be an unpleasant or painful experience. Here is our typical method: The patient is advised to take one or two pain pills one hour before the office appointment just to take "the edge off" any possible discomfort. But the key factor in painlessly removing nasal packing is anesthetizing the interior of the nose. This is very handily done by placing drops of a liquid anesthetic into the nostrils and which pass into the depths of the nasal passage. It takes about five minutes to work.

Patients are pleasantly surprised when the packing removal generates hardly any discomfort because of the combination of the oral pain medication as well as the liquid pain medication that was instilled into the nasal interior.