The standard treatment of a pinna haematoma involves drainage and compression to prevent recurrence and subsequent disfigurement. Compressive methods can be non-invasive or invasive, utilising a head bandage or through and through sutures, respectively, to keep compression in place. Leonard buttons are effective alternative compressive devices. They are simple to use and easily available.

The importance of an adequate meatoplasty is often emphasised in mastoid surgery. However, bigger is not always better, as an excessively widened external meatus can be cosmetically unacceptable, provide little extra benefit for cleaning, be an obstacle to the good fitting of hearing aids and expose the mastoid cavity to exaggerated caloric effect.

The problems created by an overly large meatus can occasionally be difficult to manage, prompting consideration of reduction of the meatus. We describe the use of a pedicled, post-auricular skin flap to achieve reduction of an excessively large meatus.

Keloid scarring is a benign hyperproliferation of fibrous tissue occurring at a wound healing site. Keloid formation related to the ear is generally the result of ear-piercing, mainly causing cosmetic disfigurement. We present an unusual case of keloid formation at a previous meatoplasty incision scar in a 10-year-old Caucasian with a modified radical mastoid cavity. This lesion prevented the cavity from self-cleaning and obstructed microscopic evaluation of the cavity. Treatment was successfully performed by surgical excision, with closure of the defect using supra-keloid skin flaps, followed by serial steroid injection therapy.

Observations based on two contrasting cases of myringitis bullosa haemorrhagica indicate that tympanosclerosis involving the tympanic membrane may have a significant effect on the clinical course of the disease. The evidence suggests that the bullae associated with the condition arise from the epidermal layer of the eardrum.

Four male patients with pseudocyst of the auricle were successfully treated with oral corticosteroids. This condition is an asymptomatic, non-inflammatory, cystic swelling, usually located in the scaphoid or triangular fossa of the anti-helix which if untreated, leads to deformity of the pinna. All successful methods of treatment described in the literature so far have been invasive. All four patients in the above series responded to oral steroid therapy alone.