Life After Gauges: Everything You Need To Know About Earlobe Repair Surgery

Remember a few years ago, when everyone seemed to be gauging their ears? From teens to adults, many were walking around with their ears stretched, often with piercing diameters of more than 10 millimeters. Like all fads, however, the hype around mainstream gauging seems to have come… and gone, leaving many lamenting their stretched out, sagging earlobes. 

So, can earlobe stretching be reversed? The short answer is, yes, it can!

How To Close Earlobe Gauges

Luckily, you don’t need to live with stretched, sagging earlobes forever. Our bodies have their own brilliant healing processes that take time to work their magic, so to some degree you might be able to heal your gauges with natural methods. Often, though, our bodies also need a bit of a helping hand.

Can I Use Natural Methods?

Natural gauge closing methods are usually best for small openings. If you’ve had your ears gauged for a long time or have significantly large lobe openings, this method may help you reduce the size; however, you will never get your pierced lobe to close completely.

To reduce the size of your ear gauge, simply size down your placeholder once a week. Your piercing will slowly shrink, making it less noticeable and easier to hide with normal earrings. For most people, the preference is to start over with a closed, unstretched earlobe.

If you were the proud owner of rather large earlobe gauges, however, you will likely need to see a surgeon for earlobe repair surgery.

Earlobe Repair Surgery

Since natural methods will not close the opening completely, some people opt for earlobe repair surgery. This is a minimally invasive procedure performed under a gentle numbing process. Your surgeon will discuss how you would like your earlobes to look so that they can reconstruct them properly. Earlobe repair surgery is a cosmetic, outpatient procedure that will leave minimal scarring if you follow your post-op instructions.

Am I a Good Candidate?

Though earlobe surgery is most commonly used to amend stretching from gauges, it’s done for other reasons too: some have acute ear trauma from a sports injury, while others have watched their ears sag with age. So if you have any stretching, gauges, or tearing of the earlobe, or are self-conscious about the appearance of your ears, you are a good candidate for earlobe repair surgery.

How Long is the Surgery?

Since this is such a simple surgery performed without the need to local or general anesthesia, it won’t take longer than an hour. For more straightforward reconstructions, you can expect the procedure to take less time. If only one of your ear lobes needs repair, your surgery will be even shorter.

What Will Recovery Look Like?

When your surgical reconstruction is complete, you will have gauze bandaging wrapped to cover your ears. You should leave this on for a full 24 hours afterward. After about a week, we will schedule a follow-up visit with you to determine whether or not your surgical site is ready for stitch removal. After this, you should keep an eye on your incision sites, applying any scar-reduction treatments that you would like to use. 

We also advise that you not re-pierce your earlobes until your wounds have fully healed— this process usually takes about one to two months.

Earlobe Repair in Orlando

Restore the shape of your original ears with ease from the reconstructive experts here at HZ Plastic Surgery! We wholeheartedly believe in the power of self-confidence and have the tools to get you there. Schedule a consultation with us to learn more about earlobe repair surgery.