Ear Pinning – Who would benefit and the best techniques

Adrian Richards, Leading Plastic Surgeon for Aurora Clinics provides invaluable information on the benefits of having ear pinning surgery and the best technique for you.

For more information please contact Aurora Clinics on 01844 214362.

Ear Pinning – Who Would Benefit and the Best Techniques

Hello. My name’s Adrian Richards. I’m a consultant, plastic, and cosmetic surgeon. Today I’m going to be talking about problem ear correction, which is also known by other terms like pinnaplasty, otoplasty, prominent ear setting back. It’s got a lot of names. I’m going to call it prominent ear correction.

Who would benefit from surgery? Well, essentially somebody’s whose got slightly sticky out ears. Normally, the ears are in a vertical diameter, normal vertical height. The problem is that the fold here just hasn’t really formed normally and this is called the antihelical fold. The helix is the rim of the ear. The antihelix is the fold here, and normally that just really hasn’t formed. The ear is outwards. It can be outwards in the upper portion, like that, or it can be outwards the whole way along. It just really depends where the fold is not properly formed.

Now, if you have other abnormalities of the ear, and these are quite common, you can have extra ear buds in front of your ear here. The ear could, rather than just be prominent, could have unusual cartilages, unusual sort of ripples in it. You can have abnormalities with the earlobe. The ear can be small or, in fact, stuck to the head and doesn’t separate normally from the head. You probably need to see a plastic surgeon, really, just to discuss those particular issues.

Today I’m really going to concentrate on the most common abnormality which is prominence. Prominence is, if you do have them and you do have children, it’s important to know that they can be corrected early at birth. If you can get them at birth and get a little splint called an ear buddy, which you place inside the ear, that can hold the cartilage back while it’s still very sort of malleable and flexible. The ear cartilage can be held back. That holds it back, helps reform the fold, and most people won’t need that surgery later in life. The problem is it does tend to run in families. If you are having children, do consider that option.

If you have got prominent ears, what can you do about it? Well, the normal age to correct them is normally about five, normally just before children go to secondary school when they’re likely to be teased and concerned about it. So, five is a good age to do it and then anytime through the teenage years is fine. Normally, we do like to wait until the child actually decides that they would like to have the ears corrected, because it’s much easier to perform surgery with the child who buys it and actually sort of volunteers for the operation.

Prominent ears can be corrected at anytime. The oldest patient I’ve treated is 70, a gentleman who decided to have his prominent ears treated late in life. They can be treated anytime and basically the technique is very similar.

All techniques have some similarities and some differences. The incision to access the cartilage is nearly always from behind. The ear is basically a cartilage sandwich. It’s cartilage, which is gristle, just like normal white gristle, a sheet of it and on either side there’s skin. It’s the cartilage that’s the problem. It’s not the skin. Just by removing and tightening the skin in the back won’t cure the problem.

Normal technique is scar in the back. Operation can be performed under general anaesthetic or twilight or local anaesthetic. It’s really your decision as to which of those you prefer. The incision is made in the back of the ear. Not much skin to remove, because as I said before it’s not the skin that’s causing the problem. Then normally stitches are used to recreate the fold. The inner ear is stitched backwards to create the fold. Sometimes it’s actually set back slightly against the skull.

These are different suture techniques which you can discuss with your plastic surgeon. Each surgeon does them slightly differently. Generally, you use permanent stitches which sort of become incorporated in the ear. That’s the technique I prefer which is really all done from the back. There are older techniques which actually divide the cartilage where the incision’s in the back. The gristle is divided and then the cartilage is scored. The surgeon makes marks on the front to weaken the front of the cartilage.

We tend to move away a little bit from those techniques because they can create a slightly unnatural looking ear. Although the ear is back, it doesn’t look absolutely normal. Also, the risk of complications is much higher with the scoring techniques because the cartilage is being divided. There’s a potential space to collect in the front of the ea,r which can give sort of cauliflower ears that a lot of rugby players get. There’s been a real trend now to using a technique just really from the back with permanent stitches used to hold the ear backwards.

I’m going to talk in another video a little bit about recovery, bandages, and those sort of issues from prominent ear correction. I hope this video has been informative. If you would like any more information about prominent ear correction or would like to arrange a complimentary consultation with one of our surgeons who specialises particularly in ears, please do so by either ringing us on 01844 214362 or e-mail at the website, which is Aurora-Clinics.co.uk. Thanks for taking the time to watch the video, and we look forward to seeing you soon.