In this post, I will try to find which implant shape is the best to get closer to the natural turbinate. Special thanks to Andrea Magelli to give me this idea.

Below it is my case of my right nasale cavity before turbinectomy (yellow), after turbinectomy (green), after my cartilage implant (blue), and after a virtual implant (red). We can see that the implant is placed on the lateral wall, it is often placed like that. On the graph below we can see that the implant reduces the emptiness, the value of the section in mm² is almost equal than before turbinectomy. So it seems good, but why many of us are not better after an implant like that ? One of the reasons is I think the quantity of the mucosa. In the second graph, you can see that the implant has not increased the surface of the mucosa, there is not more mucosa than before. In the graph I name that perimeter because it is a slide of the CT-SCAN so we are in a 2D view.

So the idea is to place several demi cylinders in order to increase the surface of the mucosa. Why demi cylinder?

• We can't implant a cartilage with the same shape that a real trubinate
• Demi cylinder are like the fins of a radiator. In the case of a radiator the fins are designed to increase the surface exchange between air and the metal, more surface more heat dissipation.

It works the 4 demi cylinder increase the surface of the mucosa at about 7%, but we are still not at the same quantity than before turbinectomy.
I don't know if it is possible to implant cartilage like that, if the mucosa is enough elastic to follow the shape of the implants. And you what do you think about this, which shape can be better ?