Pre-auricular skin tag removal at 7 months

[llmomma]

My son was born 01/26/2011 with a skin tag on his ear that looks like an antenna. now that he is 7 months old our pediatrician has referred us to a plastic surgeon at children's hospital. from what i understand he will have to be in twilght sleep while they remove it and it is an in and out surgery. should i be concerned about doing it this young? and should i consult another doctor before we move forward?

[elvie419]

Interesting that I came across this post while looking up preauricular skin tags because my son also named Logan was born in August 2011 with a tag in almost the same spot(my sons is slightly more to the left),shape and size as your sons. Me personally I am not at all wanting to get my sons removed. I figure since its just alittle piece of extra skin why put him through some unecessary medical procedure regardless of how minor it may be. Thats just my opinion. Ive been asked about it and told by people that I should have it removed because it looks weird but honestly me and my other 3 children kinda think its cute :) I figure I'll let it be his choice. When he gets older if he wants it removed then I'll have no issue taking him to the doctor to get it off.

[llmomma]

Interesting that you say that because when Logan was born he had some breathing issues. He was very grunty....and they kept him in the nicu for the entirety of my 3 day stay. He went home with me as scheduled but he was snoring sooooo loud when he slept that we literally had to wake him up and reposition him.  later we had alot of feeding issues where he vomitted. and this was diagnosed as reflux...although he passed a modified barium swallow test in the hospital where he stayed for 4 days after being diagnosed failure to thrive at 10 weeks because of how much he was vomiting. during this time he was also diagnosed with laryngomalasia (sp?)  and this was said to be the cause of the loud breathing.  while he was in the hospital we figured out that he was vomiting because for whatever reason he wasn't tolerating the powder formula. We only figured this out because all they served in the hospital was ready made. We switched him to ready made and he never vomited again.....we started feeding him on his side and the laryngomalasia slowly went away. we found that we had been assuming that he had reflux and because of this we were propping him upward to feed and sleeping him in an upward position to help. apparently from our research this kind of positioning aggravates laryngomalasia. So when we switched him to ready made formula we stopped propping him nad everything was fine. recently he has been making some grunts while he sleeps or eats but nothing compared to before. could any of this be related to the sinus issues he may have? I am going to cancel our appointment with the plastic surgeon and schedule a ent appointment first.

[Bhupinder Kaur, MD]

Hello,
I can understand your concern for your child as a mother. A preauricular skin tag is a harmless condition which is a small skin tag or pit in front of the outside part of the ear but sometimes it can indicate sinus tract problem (an abnormal connection between the skin and tissue underneath). It is usually harmless to remove this tags. However, this removal may be done a little later if there is no sinus tract problem. An ENT specialist should be consulted and then the decision to get it removed should be taken.

It is very difficult to precisely confirm a diagnosis without examination and investigations and the answer is based on the medical information provided. For exact diagnosis, you are requested to consult your doctor. I sincerely hope that helps. Take care and please do keep me posted on how you are doing.