'I was in so much pain, I was crying.' What you need to know about 'ear pinning' surgery in Australia.

Naomi says she's felt embarrassed by her ears for as long as she can remember. 

The 20-year-old horticulture student says that, as a child, she was taunted and self-conscious for the way that they stuck out, and she was never particularly happy about them herself, either. 

Naomi had spoken about having them altered for years with an ear pinning (or otoplasty) procedure but her family were stubborn about her demands and adamant that she should never try to change them. 

Ultimately, this meant that Naomi missed the opportunity to have the surgery performed for minimal cost at a children's hospital when she was under 18 years old. Due to a legal quirk in Australia, ear pinning is considered a medical procedure before the age of 18 and a cosmetic procedure after that. 

This left Naomi knowing that, when she finally had the procedure done, she was going to be bearing the majority of the cost herself. 

Naomi as a young girl. Supplied. 

But her boyfriend also knew how much this meant to Naomi, so he sought out a doctor for her by researching profiles on social media. He surprised her by introducing her to a doctor that he'd found with a significant following on Instagram – a person who described himself as a 'cosmetic surgeon'. 

"I had never even researched a doctor for this procedure before," Naomi tells Mamamia. 

"I didn't know what I was looking for, I didn't know what makes someone a reputable doctor. I just saw, he's got a large following, he posts all his results, so he's not trying to hide anything. That's what was going through my head." 

Once Naomi started messaging the doctor, she felt rushed into the procedure. She was asked to put down a $2000 deposit to secure her place near the top of a waiting list but she's never even seen the doctor either in person or video calls prior to turning up for the procedure – all of the consultation had happened over Instagram messaging. 

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Ten days before her procedure, she was required to transfer the next $2000 to pay for the ear pinning in full. 

When she did turn up for her procedure, with her mum and boyfriend in tow, she says she was shocked by the state of the clinic. Naomi says there were confronting details that she noticed immediately as she sat down in the consultation room. 

"I took footage of what I had seen, which included leftover fat in the liposuction chambers, dead flies, swabs and whatnot. I had major red flags going off in my head – but at that point I'd already for the full procedure. I was already there, I didn't know what to do." 

What happened next was disturbing and incredibly distressing for Naomi. 

Before anything else, Naomi says that the doctor filmed her to start a TikTok video. He injected her with local anasthetic and placed a sheet over her head while he started stitching her ears back – but Naomi could feel everything. She complained and he injected her with more anaesthetic but Naomi said it was an extremely painful experience. The doctor sang Cardi B out loud while he performed the procedure. 

"I was in so much pain, I was crying," Naomi says. 

But the pain that she experienced was only the beginning of her complications with the ear pinning. She returned to the doctor the next day because she was unhappy with the results, and over the next few weeks, she was submitted to two more procedures. 

The doctor continued to make excuses about why the ear pinnings weren't working. At first, he told Naomi that her mother had asked him to keep them looking natural and not to pin them back very far – she later discovered this was a lie. And after the third procedure, he told Naomi that she had something wrong with the cartilage in her ears that would affect her results. 

Naomi says that it seemed like he was making everything up as he went along. 

Naomi's ear after the procedure. Supplied. 

The stitches that were holding her ears back were visible as black dots along her ear lobes, and even now, over a year after her last procedure, Naomi says that her ears feel incredibly painful and they sit unevenly. 

"One looks okay but I have my ear lobe sticking out – and the other one, the top of my ear sticks out. I'm even more self-conscious of my ears now than I was before the procedure," Naomi says. 

What do you need to know about otoplasty? 

Ear pinning surgery has been a common procedure for children for a long time and, anecdotally, it seems to be more common for adults now, too. 

Dr Timothy Edwards is a plastic and reconstructive surgeon practicising in Adelaide. He tells Mamamia that when he started out in practice, he would generally see five-year-old boys coming in for the procedure because they were being teased at school, and girls would tend to come in later, at around 12- to 14-years-old, because that's the age that they would start to tie their hair up. 

"Now I'm seeing a lot of late teens, early adults coming in to have it done... My oldest patient was 65." 

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Dr Edwards explains that there are over 200 techniques for ear pinning, but it essentially involves carving the cartilage of the ear. The procedure is mostly done under general anaesthetic for children and local anaesthetic for adults. It takes around an hour to complete. 

As for what Naomi experienced, Dr Edwards says that the surgery doesn't rely on sutures to hold the ear back because the cartilage will eventually cut through those stitches and return to its original shape. 

In his own practice, Dr Edwards says that he only uses dissolving sutures that hold the ear for a couple of weeks. 

What is happening with the laws around cosmetic procedures? 

Naomi says that she only realised the seriousness of what she had been through when she saw ABC's Four Corners investigation titled 'Cosmetic Cowboys', which was released in late 2021 and exposed the dire lack of regulation around cosmetic procedures in Australia. 

Naomi has now joined a class action against the clinic where her ear pinning procedure was performed, which is being spearheaded by Maddens Lawyers. 

But as for the legislative changes needed to protect patients like Naomi, experts say they are still trailing far behind where they need to be. 

In July, a spate of new guidelines around cosmetic procedures in Australia came into effect, including crackdowns on social media profiles and advertising and requirements for psychological screenings and mandatory cooling-off periods between consenting to procedures and actually booking them in. 

But, as the laws stand today, doctors like the one who performed the ear pinning on Naomi are still permitted to call themselves 'cosmetic surgeons' (a term that requires only basic medical training). 'Cosmetic surgeons' are not recognised by medical establishments, unlike plastic surgeons, who are specialist surgeons that are required to undergo eight to 12 years of postgraduate surgical training. 

There are legislative changes in the pipelines to regulate the use of the term 'surgeon'. Federal and state health ministers agreed late last year on stricter regulations but this hasn't passed in all states and territories yet. 

Only Queensland so far has passed laws that could see people that use the titled 'surgeon' without surgical training fined up to $60,000 or face up to three years in prison. 

As for the rest of Australia, Dr Edwards says that while we wait for the laws to change, patients are left vulnerable to confusion and risk. 

"Australians, because we live in a first world country, believe that people who are professionals are held out to be qualified. You don't ask your barrister or your Qantas pilot to show you their qualification, you just assume they're qualified.

"And yet, this is the case with aesthetic surgery. And the real fact is that this is serious surgery. This surgery carries with it the risk of death, the risk of serious injury, the risk of permanent injury – and it's not to be taken lightly." 

How do you find the right person to perform ear pinning? 

Dr Edwards says that many practitioners will attempt to bamboozle patients by following their names and title with a number of acronyms that may be interpreted as impressive to laypeople – but there are key indicators of whether or not a doctor has legitimate training to perform an otoplasty. 

Dr Edwards suggests that anybody looking to have an otoplasty should look to the website of the Royal Australasian College of Surgeons or the Australasian Society of Aesthetic Plastic Surgeons to ensure that a practitioner's name appears. He adds that you can also search practitioners in your area who specialise in otoplasty through those sites. 

As for Naomi, she urges others who were in the same position that she was before having her procedures to "really, really think about it." 

"Make sure you know that this is what you want. Make sure you know what types of results can happen. Do your research – don't rush into it like I did.

"And if you see red flags, don't stay there, don't be quiet. Even though you're probably worried about getting a refund or whatnot, that's so much less important than compromising your health and your mental health. I just wish I had somebody to guide me when I was looking into this." 

Elfy Scott is an executive editor at Mamamia. 

Image: Supplied/Canva. 

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