Meet the boy given new ears in six hour operation

A boy who was born without any ears has had a pair created from his own ribs – based on his mother’s ear shape.

Kieran Sorkin, nine, was born deaf and also had a rare condition which meant he did not have fully formed ears – just small lobes where his ears should be.

But experts at Great Ormond Street Hospital (Gosh) performed a six-hour operation where they used cartilage from his ribs to create a pair of ears and grafted them to his head.

Kieran with his father David, before the operation (Kieran Sorkin/GOSH/PA)

While the latest procedure was primarily cosmetic, thanks to several previous operations and a hearing aid, Kieran has gradually been able to hear.

Kieran is still about 90% deaf, but when using hearing aids he can “hear the wind blow and the birds tweet”, his father David Sorkin said.

Kieran, from Bushey in Hertfordshire, struggled at his first school because he looked different to the other children. But his father said that the operation will boost the youngster’s confidence “no end”.

A very special ‘side selfie’ taken by Kieran after his operation for a new set of ears (Kieran Sorkin/GOSH/PA)

Before the surgery, Kieran said: “I’ve always wanted big ears, and now I’m finally going to have them.”

Following the procedure his parents helped him to take a photograph of his newly crafted ear, or a “side selfie”, to which he simply replied: “Wow.”

Kieran before his ear operation (Kieran Sorkin/GOSH/PA_

Kieran had been keen to have such surgery since he watched a television show about someone else having the treatment when he was six years old. His family admitted they had a moral dilemma of whether it was right to “change the features that Kieran was born with”, said his father.

Kieran was born with bilateral microtia – which affects just one in 100,000 babies – a congenital deformity where the external ear is underdeveloped.

But medics, led by Gosh consultant plastic and reconstructive surgeon Neil Bulstrode, have now turned his fortunes around.

Kieran shows of his new ears created from cartilage from his ribs which was then grafted to his head (John Stillwell/PA)

During the six-hour operation Bulstrode harvested the rib cartilage from both sides of Kieran’s chest and then carved and shaped it into frameworks for Kieran’s ears. When designing them he used an outline of his mother, Louise Sorkin’s ears, as a “family template” to make them as close as possible to the ear shape that the youngster might otherwise have had.

A Gosh spokeswoman said that researchers at the hospital are working with the University College London Institute for Child Health to try to perform ear reconstructions for children like Kieran by growing new ear frameworks and other skeletal structures from a child’s own stem cells.

They hope to be able to use stem cells from a child’s own fat to create a new ear. Experts say that the approach would be far less invasive than the current treatment.