When I was doing my plastic surgery training at Columbia, one of my favorite procedures was correction of prominent ears. It was usually done on 5 year old children before they started grade school so that they wouldn’t get teased by classmates. I enjoyed it because the incision was hidden behind the ear, and you could reshape the structure of the ear just like in sculpting.
Each case was a little different, and so you could be creative with the solutions. I could use sutures to form the curves, or weaken the cartilage with small nicks to make it bend the way I wanted it to. Sometimes cartilage was rotated or removed to achieve the desired outcome. The results were immediate, and the patients (and their parents) were very grateful and pleased.
In my private practice at Yager Esthetics, it is rare to see little children. I still do ear surgery, or otoplasty, a fair bit on teenagers and adults. The beauty of operating on older patients is that we can use local anesthesia, and show the patient the new shape in a mirror as we create it. If they want the ear a little closer to the head, we can adjust it on the spot to insure a happy patient at the end of the procedure.
Otoplasty can change your life. Pulling your hair back is an option, shorter styles are no longer taboo, and you can be confident that no one will tease you about your ears again.