Introduction: During the last few decades the meaning of anthropometric methods has increased. Many medical disciplines use measurements of human body in clinical diagnosis, treatment planning and determining the best time for operation. In Polish literature current norms for nose development do not exist, however nose is particulary often the subject of corective, reconstructive and even creative operations. The aim of this review is metric description of the characteristic features and proportions of the nose in both gender among persons, who were 4, 14, 18 and 25 years old. Also we wanted to describe how advanced was development of the nose in each age group and when it finished its evolution.
Material and method: We have invastigated 240 persons (60 persons in each age group - 4, 14, 18, 25 years old). To this review we have clasiffied children and adults without any malformations or post-traumatic disfigurments of the face, including nose. We have analysed 10 anthropometric features and than we have calculated 10 proportion indexes. We have taken those measurements according to Martin's technics.
Results: We have confirmed that most of features (without width of the nose basis) indicate statistically characteristic growth between 4 and 14 years old in both gender. Until 18 years old length of the nose foramens and width of the nasal septum in girls and length of the nose foramens and nasal tip protrusion in boys are growing. After 18 years old we have not seen any others essential changes. Also we have noticed that growth potential of nose parts is inverse proportional to the degree of nose development in the beginning of ontogenesis.
Conclusions: We suggest that any cosmetic operations of nose should be done after 18 years old.