The ear reaches about 90% of adult size by age five or six, which is why that is the earliest sensible window — usually before school teasing starts.
Ear cartilage is close to adult dimensions by the age of five or six, so a shape corrected then will still be correct at twenty. Operating earlier means reshaping a structure that has significant growing left to do, and the correction can drift. It also means general anaesthesia in a child too young to understand what is happening or to cooperate with a dressing. Waiting a year or two costs very little and removes both problems.
In the first weeks of life the cartilage is still soft from maternal hormones and can often be reshaped with a moulding splint, no surgery involved. That window closes quickly — realistically within the first six to eight weeks — and it is missed far more often than it is used, because parents are told to wait and see. If your baby is under two months old and the ears are prominent, ask about moulding before anyone mentions an operation.
The child's, as much as possible. We will not operate on a six-year-old who is content with his ears because a parent is not, and we say so at the consultation. A child who can explain in his own words what bothers him and what he wants changed will cooperate with the headband, tolerate the first tender nights and be happier with the result. If he cannot, waiting a year is not a wasted year.
Otoplasty starts at €1,600 and takes about ninety minutes for both ears. Children have it under general anaesthesia; adults usually under local with sedation. Plan five to seven days in Istanbul: surgery on day two, first dressing change on day three or four, and a final check before flying. A parent stays with the child throughout, our anaesthesia team works inside a hospital with intensive care on site, and school can normally resume after about a week.
The first two nights are the uncomfortable part, mostly from pressure under the dressing rather than from the incision. Standard paediatric painkillers cover it, and by day three most children have stopped asking for them.
No. Non-surgical moulding only works while the cartilage is still soft in the first weeks of life. After that the cartilage has set and the shape can only be changed surgically.