Gauged Earlobe Repair: A growing Request

Written by: Niamtu

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People have been intentionally expanding their earlobes for thousands of years. Over the last 20 years this has become more popular with the rise in body art including piercing and tattoos. Ear gauging is most common in college aged men and women. As the popularity of gauging has increased, cosmetic surgeons are seeing a rise in requests for repair or reconstruction of dilated earlobes. The biggest reason for treatment that I see in my practice are patients that want their earlobes reconstructed because of going into the job market or military. Others present for repair because they simply want to move on to a new look.

Repair is performed with local anesthesia and usually involves 2-3 procedures. The first procedure closes the hole and takes about 20 minutes to perform. The patient is seen about a month later and the earlobe is then sculpted to a more normal configuration with radiosurgery or laser. Finally, a third appointment may be required to treat the surgical scar or tune up the lobe.

The case pictured above shows before and after pictures of one of our favorite patients that we treated. You can see we started off with a very large gauge.