Here is a great discussion of what ear reduction surgery does to the front appearance of the ear. This particular patient was bothered by the size of their ears. When you saw the ear from the front view, it wasn’t really obvious that the ear was excessively large.
However, when you began to turn the patient to the side and stopped at the oblique angle, you could start to appreciate how big the ear actually was – and why the patient desired to have the ears made smaller. It is on this angled view where the scapha of the ear (essentially the top one-third of the ear) comes in to view. When you look closely, you can see in this case that the scapha is overdeveloped. Along with the scapha being too big, the helical rim of the ear (the cartilage rim forming the outer border) gets expanded as well – increasing the circumference of the ear. Together, this makes the top of the ear look disproportionately large. Overall, it makes the ear simply appear too tall, or too high as it extends superiorly toward the top/back of the head.
So we established that this patient with ears that are too big would benefit from reducing the size of the ear. And we also pinpointed that it was the top portion of the ear, or the scapha, that needed to be made smaller. So that is precisely what was performed by Dr. Hilinski during the macrotia ear reduction surgery.
So what happened to the front view of the ear? Below is a photo comparison of this before and after ear reduction surgery. It is actually a pretty cool photo that shows just how much change was made to the top of the ear as a result of the scapha reduction. In terms of measurement, this translated into about 14 millimeters of change. Or in other words, the ear was made smaller in size by over 1 centimeter. Now you may initially think that this is not a huge amount. But think about it again – the overall height of the ear in someone like this is about 55-60 millimeters. So that 14 millimeters of ear reduction is rather substantial in terms of the percentage of the ear that has been reduced in size. Plus, that is measuring only the height only. Keep in mind that Dr. Hilinski removes a crescent shape of tissue around the entire top of the ear – so the width of the ear is narrowed as well – contributing to a nice overall reduction in size of the ear. That change is best seen on the oblique view of the ear as provided below for your viewing.
If you have ears that are too big and would like designer ears like this patient got, contact the best macrotia surgeon in the country, Dr. John Hilinski.
