Ear replantation

Most trauma to the ear is minimal and can heal with excellent results if meticulous repair is performed immediately after the accident. Amputation of the ear, on the other hand, is a very serious problem and can lead to severe deformity. Although most amputations of the ear are caused by human or animal bites, motor vehicle injuries can cause amputation of the ear either by broken glass or by the driven metal of the window frames. Many reattachment and reconstruction techniques have been described [1-66]; however, reattachment of the severed ear continues to be a major challenge that can lead to severe deformity. To date, only a few successful cases of microvascular ear replantation have been reported [1-13,15,17,27-29,34,40,41,46,4951,59,64,65]. The first report of successful microvascular replantation was that of Pennington et al in 1990 [46]. Most cases of ear amputation involve avulsion, which creates injury to the small vessels supplying the ear, making successful replantation very difficult. There are isolated reports of successful reattachments of small portions of the car that were replaced as a composite graft [1,22,33]. To prevent confusion in understanding the extent of amputation, the author uses the following classifications for amputation of the ear [1]: partial amputation with wide pedicle [2], partial amputation with narrow pedicle [3], complete amputation of all or part of the ear with the amputated part available, and [4] complete amputation of the ear or part of it with the part unavailable.