What are the infant ear deformities in babies?
Ear anatomy’s abnormal development or deformations may lead to a series of complications from cosmetic to hearing and self-development problems. Approximately 6 to 45 % of the children are born with a kind of ear deformity.
Some ear deformities are temporal. If the deformity is caused by an abnormal position in the uterus or during the birth, as the child grows the ear widens and gets a normal form.
Other ear deformities, would require medical interference whether surgical or non-surgical to correct the ear abnormality. Since which ear would correct itself and which one would not, debating the treatment options as soon as possible is critical.
Normal outer ear anatomy
Ear shapes like a C letter which is made by curves and ear lobe. Inside of the C, the letter Y exist which is created by antihelix and up and down crura. The middle of the ear is gets shaped like a sea shell and this place is named as concha. There is a little tuber named tragus in front of the ear channel. On the other side of Chonca, there is another tuber called antitragus.
Firstly, the ear is made with cartilage which is covered of skin. In the ear lobe, there is no cartilage and is made of skin and fat. Even though there are some muscles attached to ear, many people cannot control them, therefore, only a small percentage of the people can move their ears. Outer ear is sensed by four different neurosensory.
Types of Ear Deformities
There are various of newborn ear deformities as the below are included to these:
Microtia: Underdeveloped outer ear- Anotia: Missing one or both ears
- Protruding ears: More than 2 cm from the head
- Constricted ears (or lop or cup ears): Flattened or rolled outer ears
- Cryptotia: Upper ear underneath the scalp skin
- Stahl’s ear: Pointed outer ear
- Ear tag (accessory tragus): Cartilage bump in front of the ear
- Congenital earlobe deformities: Duplicate earlobes or earlobes with clefts or skin tags
- Ear hemangiomas: Small to large benign tumors
- Lop Ear
Causes
Ear deformities’ causes are diverse. Most of the ear deformities are from birth, hence, they exist since birth. In rare cases, children may develop ear deformities due to an illness or trauma.
In some children, ear deformity is a symptom of a genetic disorder such as Goldenhar syndrome and CHARGE syndrome which can affect multiple body systems. Ear deformities may be hereditary or can be caused by genetic mutations.
Treatments
Traditional treatment in ear deformities has become waiting for a child to grow up to 5 for surgical correction. Also, we know that if these deformities are corrected early, they can be corrected surgically with an earmould.
Unfortunately, we don’t know which deformities to get corrected by itself or which one requires a surgical treatment later on. Therefore, in the early period meeting with your doctor about your child’s on-surgical earmold is important.
Treatment of Ear Correction with No Surgery
Let us look at the earmold for babies:
Because of the increment of maternal estrogen level that is seen in the infant period, baby’s ears may be shaped very easily, it is soft and after a couple of weeks and months of the birth outer ear is sensitive to moulding. Get more information about earmould.
Surgical Treatment
The children whose age is high and has an ear deformity that cannot get molding, usually need to have a surgical operation under the procedure of anesthesia. These surgeries are called autoplasty.
The non-surgical Earwell deformation processes that we apply in our clinic is now conducted by Dr. Onganlar in Europe, Asia and Middle-East countries.