The problem for Monique Herrera’s son was not life or death.

She saw the need as one of enhancing her son’s ability to learn and grow as a social being, without jeers and taunts. Mavric, her son, needed a new ear. But conventional medicine dictated that he wait until he was about 10.

He was born with what the 6-year-old calls ‘a little ear’ and doctors call microtia, a congenital ear deformity. But getting to 10 with a deformed ear hardly bigger than a lobe could scar the young boy’s personality, his mother worried.

Herrera had never heard of microtia, but what disturbed her was that when she went to a pediatric ear, nose and throat doctor, the technician administering a hearing test had never heard of it either.

The physicians close to home offered a surgical technique decades old. It involved creating a new ear from material fashioned from the child’s rib. The unacceptable catch for Herrera was that the procedure could be done when the child reached the age of about 10 to allow the ribs to grow and develop enough material to borrow.

The boy’s hearing was compromised in the deformed ear, and he also would have to wait to have ear canal surgery and any chance of improved hearing. Herrera worried that his language development and learning would be slowed.

Years went by, and as Mavric got closer to school age, his mother worried more that crucial years of educational and social development would pass before he could be helped.

Then her brother, who worked for the children’s health-care advocacy group Children’s Miracle Network in Los Angeles, heard that Dr John Reinisch, director of craniofacial and pediatric plastic surgery at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, had developed a technique, more than a decade ago, for children with microtia. Herrera got on the internet, read about the technique and made an appointment. In 2007, at age five, Mavric had the procedure done by Reinisch.

Using a porous polyethylene substance called Medpor; Reinisch creates an ear with the material and covers it with flaps of the child’s own skin. It eliminates the need for the child to grow into an adequate rib size, and it means that children with the deformity don’t have to endure a decade of compromised hearing or the possibility of 10 years of being ostracised.

‘The tissue actually grows into the pores (of the artificial material),’ he says. ‘I did the first one in 1991. It wasn’t perfect by any means, but we’ve gotten better every year. We now probably do a 100 or so a year.’

Seven months after surgery, Mavric still has scars. The new ear is slightly larger than his normal ear, but he’ll grow into it. Mavric is proud of his new ear. ‘It’s getting better every day,’ he says. — Dawn/LAT-WP Service