Repairing Your Earlobe
In Calgary, you see all kinds of earrings; they’re a popular fashion accessory for the face. Big hoops, heavy danglers, even gauges — they all are saying something about the wearer’s style. Unfortunately, your earlobes didn’t get to vote on your choices for ear adornment. As a result, they can be torn, stretched, or otherwise damaged by your earring choices. Dr. Frank performs otoplasty, ear surgery, to repair patient’s earlobes.
How are earlobes damaged?
There are two ways the earlobe usually becomes torn or overly stretched: trauma or by wearing heavy, large earrings.
Trauma can happen by catching an earring on clothing, your brush, even on bushes when out walking. If you pick up a small child, he or she might grab that shiny earring right in front of their eyes. The earring can tear right through the bottom of the lobe, or it can stretch the piercing to a degree it won’t close up.
Weight or diameter is the other cause. Today many earrings have become heavier and larger. The problem with this is that the weight can pull down and enlarge the original earring piecing to the degree it is visible to others.
Earrings are also growing in diameter, the ultimate example being gauges. Gauges are discs placed in the earlobe. If left in place long enough, when these gauges are removed the hole they created cannot close up and will need surgery to do so.
Who is a candidate for earlobe repair?
Obviously, candidates for this surgery have torn or elongated piecing tracts. The tears can be partial or complete — that doesn’t change the procedure to repair them.
These injuries don’t have to be recent to be repaired. If the patient, for instance, split her earlobe and was hoping it would heal on its own, yet it hasn’t, she can come to Dr. Frank and he can still repair it. The only difference is that he will have to remove the healed skin at the tear.
How is earlobe repair performed?
This is not a difficult procedure. Dr. Frank first injects local anesthetic into the lobe and surrounding ear. Next, to ensure the skin will heal back together, Dr. Frank cuts away the healed skin on the inside of the torn earlobe.
Once the healed skin has been removed, Dr. Frank will suture the two sides back together. He is careful with his placement of the sutures to not create a “pointed” end result.
Do you have a damaged earlobe? Call Dr. Frank at (403) 245-1228 to set up a consultation to repair it.
Ear surgery, (otoplasty is the medical term) is a cosmetic procedure to improve the appearance of the ears. Otoplasty does not affect hearing, and provides significant psychological benefits to anyone who is teased about ear size and/or shape, has had a serious ear injury, or simply wants to improve his or her appearance. Ear surgery is most often performed to set unusually protruding ears closer to the head (ear pinning) or to reduce the size of abnormally large ears.
Ear surgery, also known as otoplasty, can correct a variety of aesthetic conditions with a relatively short downtime compared to other cosmetic procedures.
