R U DEAF AWARE?

Prominent ears can be the cause of a great amount of psychological harm due teasing and also a self conciousness or lack of confidence. Usually people with prominent ears will wear their hair very long or try and cover their ears the best they can. This might place restrictions on the type of hair style one has. It can also be the cause of a lot of what is seen as nervous behaviour attempting to cover your ears with your hair. From a very early age children start to notice the differences in each others appearance and having prominent ears is something that can target a child for bullying and teasing from an early stage in their life.

People who suffer from prominent ears can have their problems resolved with a fair simple cosmetic surgery procedure called optoplasty which can also be called pinnaplasty, ear pinning, ear correction and is usually done under a local anesthetic and the patient can go home the same day. It usually a rather simple procedure with low risk and high success rate and with no visible scar which goes in the crease of your ear. This procedure is usuaully performed in younger children before they reach their teens due to the softer nature of the ear making the procedure easier to perform and increases the chances of success. However it is possible to have this procedure done and any age and even patients in their 50 and 60s have had this procedure done and has been a success.

There are many other types of different cosmetic surgery procedures that can be performed on the ears and they can include surgery to repair torn ear lobes either through trauma or from wearing heavy earrings. Again this is a fairly simple procedure and done using a local anesthetic in which the plastic surgeon will usuaully use dissolvable stitches to sew the torn lobe back together. Depend on the nature of the tear this may result in some form of scar that is visible but usually heal quite well.At the complex end of the work a plastic surgeon can do is ear reconstruction which again can be the result of trauna or due to deformity from birth. These procedures are much more complex in nature and sometimes require a specialist ear reconstruction surgeon rather than a general plastic or cosmetic surgeon.

As cosmetic surgery becomes less taboo and featuring heavily in the main stream media we are seeing specialist areas of cosmetic surgery appear and it seems that ear surgery in one of those. If you think you could benefit from ear surgery you could either go and see your GP and he may refer you to the local plastic surgery unit at your local NHS hospital or if you wanted to explore the private option you may be covered under your private health insurance if your surgery is required because of trauma or injury otherwise your would have to pay for the surgery yourself. Many plastic surgeons offer fixed price packages for simple cosmetic surgery procedures such as ear pinning although prices can vary from cosmetic surgeon to cosmetic surgeon.