Earlobe Repair Surgery

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Dr. DeBusk (00:08):
Welcome back to Behind the Double Doors. I'm Dr. Taylor DeBusk. Today on the podcast, we'll answer all your questions about earlobe repair surgery. So people that are interested in earlobe repair surgery, or people that would benefit from earlobe repair surgery, are usually patients that have worn heavy earrings for a long time. Their earlobe may have either really stretched out, elongated or even ripped because of the heaviness of their earrings. We also see a lot of patients that used to have the gauges in the ear, the earlobe, and they've gotten to a point in their life where they no longer want the gauge or they just want to get rid of the gauges. So we will remove the excess tissue and repair the earlobe to reestablish a normal shape and contour. Earlobe repair procedure or surgery is relatively quick. Like any procedure, it really depends on what we're trying to achieve, what the patient's goals or complaints are.

(01:02):
But usually if it's just like an elongated earlobe or if it's a torn earlobe, it takes about 30 to 45 minutes in the office, and that's basically from the time they sit down to the time they walk out the door. It's very straightforward. All we have to do is we numb the ear in the office. Once it's numb, we just remove the inner portion of the torn part of the earlobe and throw a few sutures in it to repair it and to reestablish its normal shape. So with the earlobe repair, we do make incisions, I guess regardless of what the complaint is or the goals are. But typically, say if the earlobe or the piercing has elongated because of heavy earrings, what we do is we'll actually just remove the inner portion of the ear piercing. So just a rim of skin around the inside, and then we can close it up.

(01:57):
Or what we can do is we can remove a portion of the earlobe to reduce it and its size completely. Say that earlobe is a circle because of the elongation of the piercing, what we can do is remove about a third of the bottom of the circle and then close it on itself. And that, again, that just reduces the size of the earlobe and reestablishes a nice kind of normal shape to it. There's the old wives tale that your nose and your ears never stop growing, and that's partly true. What it is, it's gravity. So gravity in conjunction with heavy earrings, both of those things play a role in the elongation of our earlobes, as well as normal changes associated with time. And that's thinning of skin, because we lose collagen, we lose the elastin, so our earlobes elongate.

(02:48):
They also lose fat, they get really thin and wrinkly. So not only do we reduce the size of lobes, specifically, when we do facelifts, oftentimes we want to make earlobes a little bit smaller so they fit the shape of the face. But a lot of times we'll actually put fat or filler in the earlobe to plump it up, give it a little bit more volume, the volume that it's lost with time, to make it look a little bit more youthful. So I use a hyaluronic acid filler. It doesn't really matter what brand, you can use a Juvederm product, you can use a Restylane product. You want to use one that's a little bit thinner, a little bit thinner viscosity, but to give it a little bit volume, not to make it too heavy, a lot of times we actually just put fat in the earlobe, you can fat graft, and those are permanent changes.

(03:36):
So you'll never need filler again because typically filler will last anywhere between nine, 12, maybe 18 months depending on the thickness. But fat, as long as the fat survives, it will last forever. So people often ask after we repair the earlobes when they can get their ears pierced. I prefer them to not get the ears pierced any sooner than one month, but ideally, I tell patients to wait at least three months to have their ears pierced. Then that really allows for you to heal up to about 50% of the way of normal tissue healing, to minimize the risk of any complications after the ear has been repaired. And then when it's time to get your ears pierced again after the surgery, I personally will pierce your ears. But if I'm doing it, I'm going to make you wait the three months.

(04:27):
So after earlobe repairs or earlobe reductions, or anytime we make an incision on the ear, I recommend kind of the same thing I recommend with any incision. So that first week, the tensile strength of your incision is only 3% of normal skin. So basically what that means is that you could accidentally rip it open one week after surgery, if you manipulate your ear or you manipulate any incision too much. Once you're about three to four weeks or a month after surgery, the strength of that incision goes from 3% up to 30, maybe even 50%. So there's a dramatic improvement in the strength of your incisions four weeks after surgery. So usually what I say is that try to be careful with any incision for that first month. After that first month, we talk about doing things like massaging your incisions, massaging your earlobes, things like that.

(05:17):
Because what that does is it helps to remodel the collagen or the scar tissue that you've developed in that acute phase of wound healing. So a lot of times people will, they feel like there's a ball or a pea on the inside of the earlobe in those first couple of weeks. Once you hit that one month, then I tell them to intentionally massage their ear and that will help soften it and reduce some of that firm scar tissue that they've developed. So earlobe repairs, we typically charge around $850 an ear, and that's everything included. That's all everything from the local anesthesia to the sutures, so it's an all-inclusive price. So that's for one ear, so two ears would be twice that price. And that's for a straightforward ear repair. If it's more complex, say a gauge or things like that, that may prolong the timeframe it takes or the complexity of the reconstruction, then it may be a little bit more pricey. But typically it's about $850.

Announcer (06:26):
Basu Aesthetics and Plastic Surgery is located in Northwest Houston in the Towne Lake area of Cypress. If you'd like to be a guest or ask a question for Dr. Basu to answer on the podcast, go to basu plastic surgery.com/podcast on Instagram. Follow Dr. Basu and the team at Basu Plastic Surgery. That's BASU Plastic Surgery. Behind the Double Doors is a production of The Axis, THE AXIS. io.