Earlobe rejuvenation. Sounds kind of weird but it’s actually a pretty common request and something that I fix pretty commonly. What tends to happen is that through a combination of aging and years of wearing heavier earrings, the lobe will thin and stretch. The piercing hole also tends to elongate giving the ear a creased appearance or in some cases it is actually split. In the case of a thinned, deflated lobe we use dermal fillers to re-establish the volume. Typically this means either Restylane or Juvederm. The cost for the filler is around $500 and should last over a year. The good thing here is that there will be extra filler after the lobes are plumped and this can be used somewhere else on the face. If the lobules are split, I can repair this with a minor office procedure. The ear is numbed with local anesthesia and the split is removed and then with a few stitches the earlobe is repaired. This takes about 5 minutes and there is no downtime or recovery. Pain medicine isn’t even necessary. You can re-pierce the ear but you have to wait 3 months. A lot of times the ear isn’t split but the hole is so large it appears it is split. I treat this just like a split lobe and repair it as described above. If the lobe has just gotten too large and droopy a small wedge is removed and the earlobe made smaller. This is often coupled with the Restylane and Juvederm treatments. A last category of earlobe problems that I am seeing in our younger patients are the gauged lobes. These repairs are more complicated and a little trickier but they can still be carried out under local anesthesia in the office. The repairs tend to take a little longer, maybe about 10 minutes a side. After the recovery is the same as a simple split.

Lee Corbett, MD

Medical Director: Corbett Cosmetic Aesthetic Surgery and MediSpa