Before and 2 years after My Otoplasty Surgery
Otoplasty for Children and Adults
Otoplasty or ear pinning is a procedure which will correct prominent ears. It is a excellent procedure with profound psychological effects.
Because the ear is about 95% adult size by 4 to 5 years of age, this is the ideal time to perform the surgery. This will eliminate the taunting these children undergo when they enter school. The comments about "Dumbo ears" may be so frequent that the child withdraws from social events, no longer wishes to go to school and suffers academically.
More often than not the parents are unaware of the extent of teasing.
Correcting the Ear
Otoplasty generally consists of correcting two areas causing the ears to stick out.
Most individuals will need to have excessive (conchal) cartilage removed from the ear, which allows the ear to sit closer to the scalp.
The second problem is the lack of a ridge, called the antihelical fold. This ridge just inside the rim of the ear is fashioned by cutting, scoring or suturing parts of the ear cartilage.
Additional Ear Deformities
Microtia, a rudimentary ear is not nearly as common and it's correction is much more complicated. Typically, there are only remnants of the ear formed and it will take several operations to build the new ear. These operations will involve fashioning an ear framework, usually from rib cartilage, moving and/or grafting to correct a skin insufficiency and then repositioning the ear.
Lop ear, constricted ear or excessive cupping near the top of the ear may require techniques to cut, add or remove abnormal cartilage and adding skin.
Minor deformities can exist including tags of skin with or without cartilage embedded in front of the ear.
General Information About an Otoplasty
Surgical Time - 1.5 hours
General Anesthesia preferred
Moderate Pain
Recovery time: 4 week
Head Bandages for 5 days
Ages: 5 years through adulthood
Ear Pinning - Otoplasty
CALL
Dr Costanzo Thousand Oaks Plastic Surgeon
805 / 373-9919 or 818 / 706-2070
Numera Corporation continues to use my patient on their YouTube video for Cartilaze.
The reason I found out about Cartilaze was a unhappy mother whose daughter had
the Cartilaze procedure from a Texas ENT doctor promoting the procedure. After no
results from the procedure, she was searching the web to find answers and she noticed he had used one of my patients photos copied from the web.