After consulting a large number of documents about ear reconstruction and consulting senior professors with rich clinical experience, experts in ear reconstruction for microtia do not recommend using "biological materials" (polyethylene artificial materials) for the following reasons:
The chemical composition of artificial materials is polyethylene, and there is no clear scientific data to prove whether it will "age" after being implanted in the body. If you age once, it will bring future trouble to patients.
The artificial material bracket is just a shape, which can only be cut to length, but not shaped. The ear made is a template just like the standard parts processed in the factory. However, everyone's ears are different and there are many forms. The artificial ear bracket cannot be customized. Symmetry between the two sides after the operation will be very uncoordinated.
Artificial ear is made of temporal fascia flap and skin graft, but we have pigmentation in China, and the color of reconstructed ear is different from that of normal ear.
The method of temporal fascia flap plus skin grafting needs to take fascia flap and skin, which has great trauma and many scars on scalp, reconstructed ear and chest donor site.
In the later stage, due to self-rejection, traumatic rupture, interference and other reasons, the artificial material stent will be easily exposed, and the patient has to take out the artificial prosthesis material. Long-term follow-up of people who use artificial material stents shows that the proportion of failed cases is high.
Most doctors with more ears in the world have tried artificial materials, but most of them gave up later. At present, no more than 4% of doctors in the world use artificial materials to make ears, and most doctors still choose soft ribs to make ears.
It has been about 100 years since the soft rib was used to reconstruct the ear. Relatively speaking, the technology of ear reconstruction is relatively mature. A large number of clinical experiences have proved that the success rate of soft-rib ear reconstruction is much higher than that of "artificial materials", and the effect is far better than that of "artificial materials", and the price is cheap.
To sum up, this is why most doctors choose to use their own weakness for ear reconstruction.
Medical research on artificial materials has never given up, so it is expected that biomaterials especially suitable for human body will appear in the future. Only in this way, I think most doctors will give up the method of soft rib ear reconstruction.