BMJ 2001;323:400 ( 18 August )

Letters

"High" ear piercing and perichondritis of the pinna

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

EDITOR---Hanif et al highlight the rising incidence of perichondritis of the pinna after "high" ear piercing.1 Our own experience adds further information.

We found an incidence of 10 cases in a population of 320 000 from July 1998 to October 1999. Nine patients were female, one male, and all were younger than 20 years old. The auricular abscess took two to four weeks to develop after high ear piercing. On aerobic culture six patients' cultures grew Pseudomonas aeruginosa and four were sterile. Inappropriate antibiotics were prescribed by general practitioners, the most popular being flucloxacillin (four cases) and erythromycin (two cases).

We agree with Hanif et al that ciprofloxacin is the antibiotic of choice in children, despite reports of quinolone causing arthropathy in weight bearing joints of immature animals.2 Our inquiries at local beauty salons, etc, found that a sterile prepacked "gun" designed for piercing the lobule is used for high ear piercing. This . . . [Full text of this article]
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Relevant Article

Lesson of the week: "High" ear piercing and the rising incidence of perichondritis of the pinna
Junaid Hanif, Adam Frosh, C Marnane, K Ghufoor, R Rivron, and G Sandhu
BMJ 2001 322: 906-907. [Extract] [Full Text] [PDF]

This article has been cited by other articles:

  • Keene, W. E., Markum, A. C., Samadpour, M. (2004). Outbreak of Pseudomonas aeruginosa Infections Caused by Commercial Piercing of Upper Ear Cartilage. JAMA 291: 981-985 [Abstract] [Full text]  
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