Medical Reports: Nose News

WSVN -- Mary Gardner was happy with the nose she was born with. She had never considered a nose job until she had an accident last year.

Mary Gardner: "I had an accident where my nasal septum was deviated."

She decided to have rhinoplasty to fix her nose, but was left with an even bigger nightmare. Her nose job was botched.

Mary Gardner: "They took out too much of the septum, which left it collapsed. The structural integrity of my nose was lost."

Dr. Jacob Steiger: "You can see that the nose is completely collapsed. It's got that boxer's nose look where it's completely caved in here, and in addition the tip nose is balled up like one big giant ball."

Even worse, it was hard for Mary to breathe and she was embarrassed at how her new nose looked.

Mary Gardner: "Every time I looked in the mirror all I thought of was, I can't wait to get my nose fixed, I want it to look like it used to look."

Rhinoplasty is one of the most popular cosmetic surgeries with more than 150,000 nose jobs performed a year. About 40,000 of those patients will need a correction, but revision rhinoplasty is not as simple as the initial surgery often because there is not enough cartilage left to rebuild the nose.

Dr. Jacob Steiger: "Traditionally, we would go to the septum to get cartilage to help rebuild the nose. However, in revision surgery, most of the time that cartilage is either removed or it's not enough cartilage to rebuild a nose structurally."

So doctors are now going to an unusual body part to find cartilage they're using your ribs.

Dr. Jacob Steiger: "The biggest benefit of the rib cartilage is I have so much material to work with, that I could literally rebuild the entire nose."

Doctors simply make a small incision under the breast and then harvest and carve the rib cartilage to fit your nose.

Dr. Jacob Steiger: "This is the appearance of the rib after it's carved, and I use this rib to rebuild the nose."

Since it comes from your own body, there's little chance of the body rejecting it or an infection. Plus, it looks natural.

Dr. Jacob Steiger: "The rib cartilage is permanent. It gets integrated into your own body. When I put it in the nose it pretty much becomes part of the nose."

Using Mary's rib cartilage Dr. Steiger was able to recreate her old nose.

Mary Gardner: "I was so happy when he removed the cast because it was my old nose. I love my nose how it looks now, the profile exactly what I wanted."

Even if she does get a little ribbing from her friends about where her nose came from.

Mary Gardner: "It creeps a lot of people out when I tell them I have rib cartilage in my nose. It looks great, so I don't care."

Diana Diaz: "Patients are able to return to work in a week, and it takes about 10 days to get back to full activities."