While it may sound like a good idea, actually watching your child's surgery is often emotionally difficult. My team and i allow parents to be with the child until they go under anesthesia and then shortly after when they enter the recovery area. this usually more then balances the stress with the reward of being with your child that parents often seek.

I almost always use permanent sutures for cartilage shaping and dissolvable ones for the skin closure.

Normal ears have a fold called the "antihelix". Lack of this fold results in protuberance. During otoplasty the fold is recreated with special mattress sutures placed in the cartilage.

Yes. I do require that patients wear a head band around the ears for the first three months when doing these types of activities to prevent them from being pulled forward during the healing process.

Patients commonly come from long distances for their surgeries and we routinely work with their local physicians.

Cartilage has "memory" and may in fact have some return to old shape.

Ear lobe keloids are among the most vexing problems to treat due to their high propensity to recur. Surgery, lasers, radiation, topical chemotherapy, steroid injection and pressure clamps have all been tried with no one method being reliably effective

I let patients do it at one week.

Typically not unless the child has some underlying health problem that requires more intense post anesthesia monitoring (heart/lung problems etc).