Background and objective.

Microtia is not only an aesthetic problem but involves patient psychosocial development. The gold standard for auricular reconstruction is autologous costal cartilage.

Our aim is to evaluate surgical outcomes and impact in quality of life after auricular reconstruction with autologous costal cartilage in microtia patients at our hospital.

Methods.

Observational, descriptive, cross an prolective study on patients with uni or bilateral microtia 1 year after auricular reconstruction procedure.

Surgical outcome was evaluated with a method previously published by the first author evaluating auricular aesthetic characteristics. Quality of life was evaluated with Glasgow Benefit Inventory, validated in Spanish, for over 15 years old patients; for pediatric patients we used the Glasgow's Children's Benefit Inventory, in a validated translated version.

Results.

The study group was composed by 83 patients from 8 to 46 years old. Surgical outcome were excellent in 13 cases (15.6%), good in 27 (32.5%), regular in 29 cases (34.9%) and bad in 14 (16.8%). Quality of life had a positive total score in 78 cases (93.9%) and negative in 5 (6%).

Conclusions.

The study allows us an objective overview of surgeon's expectations regarding patient satisfaction and well-being. Although we only found good and excellent results in 48% of the patients, when reviewing the satisfaction scale we found positive scores in almost 94%. It`s important that patients know our concern about the impact of our intervention and to provide feedback on our surgical practice. As far as we know, this is the first study in Mexico evaluating both aspects.

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