Breast implants, liposuction and facelifts get a lot of attention and for good reason, but today we are celebrating a lesser known procedure. Otoplasty is a procedure for correcting ear imperfections and people who receive this procedure (typically patients with prominent ears) love it.
Though prominent ears are the most common aesthetic imperfection to be treated by otoplasty, they are far from being the only one. There dozens of different imperfections and deformities that can happen to ears, but they often go unnoticed because, really, who looks at ears?
Cagot Ear is a defect in which the ear has no earlobes. The name comes from a 3000-year-old minority from western France and northern Spain called the Cagots, who were generally shunned and hated. The Cagots were forced to live in separate villages and lived as second-class citizens. Exactly why they were so hated remains something of a mystery today, but maybe it had something to do with the fact that some of them had no earlobes.
Darwinian Ear is a defect in which the a small portion of the rim of the ear’s cartilage is flat, rather than folded inwards. The defect is present in about 10 percent of people and isn’t very noticeable, but is interesting as an evolutionary remnant from when human head muscles once permitted a person to voluntarily prick up the ears in a given direction.
Prominent Ears, according to wikipedia, are considered abnormal when they protrude beyond 25 degrees from the side of the head. So get out your protractor and see if you’re normal. (If you have a protractor nearby, you’ve already failed the normal test.) Many people with prominent ears don’t mind them and even like the way they look, but it’s also a procedure that has consistently pleased the patients who’ve had it. It can make a big difference in appearance for those who are self-conscious about their ears.
Until next time.
