A truck driver suffered near-fatal injuries in a massive crash -- including the loss of an ear, severed by his seat belt. But that accident presented an otologist-neurotologist and surgeon with the Silverstein Institute in Sarasota an opportunity to try a new technology, the Sarasota Herald-Tribune reports.
The old technology, in which plastic surgeons crafted a sort-of ear and glued it to the head, wasn't ideal because the ear didn't look normal and in the Florida heat it sometimes fell off. The one that maxillofacialprostheticist David Trainer is creating will be held on with titanium implants inserted into bone.