I knew absolutely nothing about ear hematomas, so I never responded. It was good to see what options there were for her in case this ever happens to my dog. I'm glad she responded back, not many people do.
Agh. The software here is primitive and my comment was accepted before it was finished and I cannot edit it or delete it.
Since no one responded but someone in the same situation may find this post, I will give a brief follow up.
My dog did have an aurul hematoma, a large one in fact. That is basically a blood blister. It felt like one of those plastic bubbles which come in sheets, that we used to be able to pop (a lot of fun) which are used as packing material. In his case the hematoma was about 3 inches long and three quarters of an inch in diameter
At any rate, this is my layperson's understanding. There were three basic options. The least invasive would be to leave it alone, which had the danger of infection, especially if the dog scratched it and opened it up when you weren't looking. The second, more invasive, treatment would be aspiration - to stick a needle into the blood blister and draw out some of the blood and clots. If you read on the Internet about this, unfortunately if you do this the hope is that the body will then reabsorb the remaining blood on its own, but the blood can return, with the hematoma swelling back to the old size. The third, most radical treatment is surgery, which is expensive and involves stitching the skin, which is stretched, back onto the year. This is an extremely imprecise description - I was not considering surgery because of the expense, but there are precise descriptions out on the Internet.
I chose the middle option, aspiration. It cost me $170. The reasons that I chose that were because the cost of the operation is $650++, because my dog's ears internal ears were in great shape, squeaky clean and no infection in the outer ear, according to the vet, because my dog does not have a habit of scratching his ear, and because he is always with me -- I can monitor how he is going. He aspirated the hematoma, gave my dog a cortisone shot in the earflap, and gave me ear drops to use for 14 days in case he had an inner ear infection that we could not see. My friend has a dog in the same situation, with the large hematoma on his ear. She chose to do the surgery, because she was told that the less invasive options would leave him with a cauliflower ear, misshapen. Both of our dogs are over eight years old, and it seems to me that they can live with a misshapen ear. My.vet did not guilt trip me about choosing not to have surgery, but he did let me know that this could go wrong and surgery may be necessary.
Because no one responded to my post, I will not be returning here and so will not be answering any comments. But you can talk to each other via comments on this post, and I hope that this helps someone.
Since no one responded but someone in the same situation may find this post, I will give a brief follow up.
My dog did have an aurul hematoma, a large one in fact. That is basically a blood blister. It felt like one of those bubbles which come in sheets, that we used to be able to pop (a lot of fun) which are used in packing.
At any rate, this is my layperson's understanding. There were three basic options. The least invasive would be to leave it alone, which had the danger of infection, especially if the dog scratched it. The second, more invasive treatment, was to aspirate some of the blood out of the hematoma ( Schticking a needle into the hematoma but in trying out some of the blood clots
Forgot to say that he is shaking his head more than usual.