Piercing · Pressure · CityLink Mall
An earlobe keloid is a firm, shiny overgrowth of scar that starts at a piercing and spreads beyond the hole, often months after the piercing seemed healed. This page covers how to tell it from other lumps, why steroid injections, pressure earrings and silicone come first, and why excision is only ever one step, as Dr Sin Yong plans it.
A piercing is a wound that is never quite allowed to finish healing: the jewellery keeps the tract open for as long as it is worn. In skin with a keloid tendency, low-grade irritation along that tract keeps fibroblasts laying down collagen after repair should have stopped, and the scar extends into the surrounding lobe.
So a keloid can appear long after a piercing looked settled, or follow a second piercing in an ear that coped with the first. Cartilage piercings higher up the ear carry the same risk and heal more slowly; this page is about the lobe. What keeps the process going:
Types
Several lumps form at piercings, and only a keloid tends to come back, so naming the right one matters. The sign to look for is the edge: a keloid spreads beyond the original hole into skin that was never pierced, and keeps getting bigger. The wider picture is on keloids and hypertrophic scars.
Earlobe keloids are usually rounded and firm, on the front of the lobe, the back, or both, joined through the tract in a dumbbell shape. Compared with chest keloids they often itch less, though they can ache, feel tight, or catch on hair and clothing.
The Decision
Dr Sin Yong examines the front and back of the lobe and the tract between them, since treating one end alone leaves the other to keep growing. He asks about jewellery, earlier treatment and family history. A lump that bleeds, ulcerates, grows quickly or looks unlike your other scars is examined first, because other growths can resemble a keloid.
When to treat. A lump that has spread past the hole will not go away by itself. The first line is a course of steroid injections into the lump. They aim to calm inflammation and slow collagen production, softening and flattening it. For small lesions, cryotherapy is another way to reduce bulk; whether it suits you, and where it would be given, is discussed separately.
When excision is considered. Surgery comes up more often on the lobe than on the chest, because the lobe is easy to reach and a pedunculated keloid (one on a stalk) can be removed with little tension on the closure. It is assessed at Atelier and arranged by referral to a plastic surgeon where needed. Removal is never the whole plan: after it come steroid injections into the edges of the wound, pressure earrings and silicone, because a keloid cut out on its own often returns larger. Radiotherapy to the wound after excision is used in some centres, and is discussed separately with the surgical team.
When it is not a keloid. An irritation bump usually settles with different jewellery and gentle saline care. A hypertrophic scar gets silicone and pressure first, with injections if it persists. A cyst may be removed with its sac; a suspected infection is treated promptly and never injected.
At Atelier
At Atelier, keloid treatment for the earlobe combines several steps, each reassessed:
What is realistic. The aim is a lobe that is softer, flatter and less tender. Pressure and follow-up guard against recurrence but cannot rule it out, so check-ups carry on after the course.
What To Avoid
Contact the clinic if you have increasing pain, spreading redness, pus or fever; a wound opening in the keloid; fast growth; or skin around an injected keloid that becomes markedly thin or changes colour. Problems after treatment are set out in complication care.
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Atelier Aesthetics · Owned by AYA
1 Raffles Link, #B1-28, CityLink Mall, Singapore 039393 · +65 8023 7170
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