We took our infant to Dr. Costa to have an ear tag removed and it was a horrible experience. He had a large ear tag that our pediatrician wasn't sure if it could be removed without a full surgery and general anesthesia, so we made an appointment to consult about what she advised. We weren't sure if we would wait until he was older or if she would want to remove it now, and she advised removing it now. We asked if his tragus would look like a normal ear and she responded that "she wouldn't suggest operating if she she thought otherwise".
Well the surgery did not result in what we had discussed, it does not look like a normal ear. When we expressed that we were not pleased, her tone became very curt, so much so that she didn't thoroughly discuss the follow up or pain management for him and she abruptly left.
In the followup appointment, she was unapologetic about how the surgery went and didn't think it was at all a problem that she hadn't looked at his other ear to attempt to match his tragus. She stated then that obviously he was going to have to get another surgery, when he's older and can go under general anesthesia to make his ear look normal--which was not at all originally discussed with us. If future surgeries were discussed then we would have thought about the stress of going through this procedure now when he's an infant, not to mention how stressful it was to nurse him through the procedure and feel every time she cut tissue away from him. We were open to waiting until he was older, but she was so certain about removing the tag now and told us there would be a different outcome. read more