Experts in ear reconstruction, focused on you
When you’re looking for ear reconstruction, Mayo Clinic Children's experts can provide a personalized plan of care that’s designed to meet your goals.
Our specialists are skilled in treating both children and adults who were born with congenital ear differences, or who have had a traumatic ear injury.
Conditions we commonly treat:
- Anotia and microtia — a missing ear
- Constricted ear — an ear that is folded over itself
- Cryptotia — an ear that is partly under the skin
- External ear burn
- Prominent ears
- Reconstruction after cancer resection
- Stahl ear — a pointed ear with extra skin folds
- Trauma after cancer resection, burns and injury
We're with you every step of the way.
At Mayo Clinic, your team of experts will provide a comprehensive evaluation and treatment plan. This includes surgical approaches that many providers don’t offer.
Your team will include a plastic surgeon, otolaryngologist, nurse, and additional Mayo Clinic specialists as needed.
Innovation leads to better outcomes.
We offer several innovative options:
A nonsurgical option for newborns with fully formed but misshapen ears, molding is most effective when initiated within the first 7–10 days of life, when elevated estrogen levels render the cartilage most pliable.
Available at only a few centers worldwide, this advanced technique offers reconstruction in a single outpatient procedure as early as ages 3–4, when ears reach 85% of adult size. A custom 3D-printed porous polyethylene implant is modeled from a laser scan of the contralateral unaffected ear for symmetry. The implant is covered with a temporoparietal fascia flap and skin graft. Reconstruction before school age supports auditory function, psychosocial development and classroom confidence.
Autologous reconstruction, typically performed between 8–10 years, uses costal cartilage for framework creation. It requires 3–4 staged procedures for cartilage harvest, sculpting, placement and skin grafting.
When reconstruction is not feasible, such as due to severe trauma from burns, tumor resection or failed previous reconstructions, a prosthetic can be used.
Treatment options may include surgical reconstruction, canaloplasty or amplification devices. Auditory rehabilitation surgery may be performed concurrently with ear reconstruction, depending on the child's age and nature of the malformation.
Expert care, delivered efficiently.
Mayo Clinic is an approved craniofacial center, where our specialists are all in one place and working together. Within one day, you can have everything that you or your child needs to begin the care journey.
Transforming Lives: Innovative Ear Reconstruction.
Comprehensive treatment options include innovative 3D-printed porous polyethylene implants for single-stage outpatient reconstruction as early as age 3–4, supporting hearing, psychosocial development, and school readiness.
Innovations in Pediatric Ear Reconstruction
When you look at the impact that you have on those kids, it's just something that is beyond imagination. It is extremely satisfying. Ear reconstruction addresses a wide spectrum of congenital ear differences that could range from a fully formed ear that is deformed in shape, to a complete congenital absence of the external ear. For anear deformity, that is a very specialized field that needs to be treated by true experts that have the skill and the patience to surgically treat that patient.
We have different treatment modalities from something that is nonsurgical, such as molding the external ear to surgical treatment, which involves reconstructing an entire external ear. A technique which is a more modern way of ear reconstruction using an implant. The first step is to make sure that we understand the shape of the ear, the width, the length, and the full dimensions of that ear. To help us construct an ear on the abnormal side that matches the normal side. We use a porous polyethylene implant, and that porous polyethylene implant that allows permeation of fluid and tissue through it. The implant is covered with a very thin tissue that is taken from underneath the scalp, and the whole construct is covered with a skin graft that is taken from other parts of the body.
It's a one stage surgery. It is performed in an outpatient setting. One of the beautiful things that we have at Mayo Clinic that we have all the providers in one place. So the communication is very easy and the care coordination is streamlined and ensures optimal care for these patients. There are very few centers around the country and around the world that have expertise in treating that group of patients. The most important thing about this technique, which I find it the most attractive that the surgery could be done in young kids around the age of three. Kids don't have to suffer with living with an absent ear during the early years of childhood.
When it's time to find answers, you know where to go.
Mayo Clinic Children’s in Rochester, Minnesota is a Level 1 Children’s Surgery Center, the highest verification awarded by the American College of Surgeons (ACS).
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