A New and Practical Instrument for Antihelix Scoring: Gillies Skin Hook

Prominent ears are relatively common, with an incidence in whites of about five percent¹. It is inherited as an autosomal dominant trait and is commonly caused by a combination of two defects: (1) underdevelopment of antihelical folding and (2) overdevelopment of the conchal wall. Many techniques have been described to correct the antihelical fold. In 1958 after Gibson and Davis2 showed the ability of injured cartilage to bend away from the side of injury, Stenstrom described scoring of the anterior auricular cartilage to create an antihelical fold, Chongchet’s technique used sharp scoring of the lateral scaphal cartilage to form an antihelix with a scalpel.2-4 Stenstrom, in contrast, used a rasp to blindly score the antihelix.3 Many different instruments have been used for scoring, including scalpels, rasps, abraders, diamond burr drills, Adson-Brown forceps, hypodermic needles and bipolar cautery.5 We present in this paper, a new instrument which can be used for scoring,a fine skin hook.