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Treatment of keloid scars of the earlobes
Last reviewed: 04.07.2025
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The variety of clinical variants of keloid scars leads to the need to develop different approaches to the problem and create different treatment regimens. Thus, the treatment of keloid scars of the earlobes has its own characteristics. Most often, they are small in size, but despite this, this pathology causes many problems to its owners due to localization in visible places. Patients cannot open their ears, put on earrings and clips! Unfortunately, due to the low professionalism of workers in the service sector of beauty salons, failure to comply with elementary rules of asepsis and antisepsis, failure to communicate to clients the rules for caring for puncture sites, this pathology is not uncommon. This is partly due to the use of special "guns" with small earrings on screws for puncture and the disappearance from sale in pharmacies of "hygienic" silver lightweight earrings on a thin bow, which made it easy to care for the puncture site. Many patients do not even realize that the spherical formation that appears at the puncture site is a keloid scar that needs to be treated, and when they see a doctor, the scar becomes larger and more difficult to treat.
There are isolated publications in the literature on the topic of treating keloid scars of the auricles. Most authors suggest surgical removal followed by wearing pressure clips or radiation therapy, or corticosteroid injections. If early publications simply referred to surgical removal (cutting), then recent publications talk about deep removal of scar tissue with separation of skin, 1-2 mm thick, and engraftment of this flap in place of the removed scar.
The optimal treatment for keloid scars of the earlobes is as follows.
If the scar is growing.
Stage 1. Injection of Kenologist-40 or Diprospan into the base of the keloid.
Stage 2. No earlier than a month after injection, perform electro- or laser excision to the base of the keloid. This is often accompanied by the removal of scar tissue almost to the epidermis of the opposite surface of the ear lobe.
Stage 3. After the wound surface has healed, irradiation with Bucky rays or a session of close-focus X-ray therapy. In this case, the patient must wear a pressure clip for at least 6 months and at least 12 hours a day.
Note! During surgical removal of a large keloid, the area of the lobe may decrease, which the patient should be warned about.
Stage 4. Electrophoresis with lidase No. 10 is performed, and after 2 weeks, electrophoresis with collagenase No. 10 every other day.
Stage 5. Phonophoresis with contractubex 15 procedures daily or every other day.
Stage 6. If the scar grows despite the treatment, there is a need for microinjections of diprospan in combination with Bucky irradiation or close-focus radiotherapy. If the scar continues to grow, methotrexate may be used.
If the scar is stabilized (no signs of growth).
There is no need to inject the scar with prolonged corticosteroids before surgery and treatment begins with surgical removal.
The last stage may not be necessary if the treatment process goes well.
The optimal methods and means of treating keloid scars are all available and listed methods and means. However, among them, emphasis can be placed on:
- hormonal therapy;
- pyrotherapy;
- Bukki-irradiation;
- scar compression agents;
- reduction from the inside using surgical methods;
- laser and electroexcision.