Hi everyone. I really need some advice on how to handle this situation. Our son is 17 and he was teased badly for years about his ears. We finally decided to find a surgeon and go get a consultation for an otoplasty. Surgeon seemed great. Told us he was a great candidate and he was well reviewed. He has a beautiful practice with his own surgery center. Price was $5000 which was reasonable. We booked the surgery. He did not go under anesthesia and opted for staying awake and using local anesthesia. Everything seemed great until my son got the bandages off a week later. I could immediately tell the surgeon was not aggressive enough. His ears, while a slight improvement were nothing like we expected. We talked through at consultation that he would be aggressive and go as close to his head as possible. We had to let everything heal and we all agreed we would wait 6 months. When we went back 6 months later, my son told him he was hoping for a better result and of course we agreed with him. The surgeon was not unkind to us but you could tell he was not happy but agreed he needed a revision. We booked it and they were going to charge us $1000.I told them we were not paying for the additional fees and they backed down and he did the revision for free. When our son was about to go back for the revision both my husband and I said to the surgeon, "Please be more aggressive this time". We were nice but firm. As soon as I went to the waiting room, I had a sinking feeling because I had a voice saying to me..if he was going to fix his ears properly, he would have done it the first time. Our son has the second surgery. Bandages come off and they look slightly better but we were all still disappointed. Our son felt like he had been through enough and honestly, it was a mediocre result. We let it go. That was a year ago. My son has been complaining about the scars hurting the entire time. I hadn't looked behind his ears in several months and this coincided with him getting his hair cut short so the backs of his ears are now visable. To say we were horrified to see what had happened to the scars is an understatement. They are horrible and they hurt him. Clearly they have keloided badly.

What do we do? Do we go back to the surgeon and ask him to fix them? Do we ask for our money back and have someone else fix them? I don't know if another surgeon will take our case. Any advice would be appreciated. We cannot leave his ears like this. What turned out to be trying to help our son feel better about himself has resulted in these horrible scars that everyone notices. I feel if he had done a good job, his ears should be so close to his head that that scars shouldn't even really be visable. Thank you all for your input.

Botched Otoplasty