What caused a small hole in the baby's ear during pregnancy?

The older generation called this small hole "Cangyan". They think that children with this small hole are "rich and expensive" and will have food and clothing in the future.

The wish is good, but the real name of this small hole is "preauricular fistula". Strictly speaking, it should be considered a congenital malformation. Preauricular fistula is mostly caused by tissue development disorder that forms auricle during embryonic development.

In the first few months of pregnancy, the baby looks like a small hippocampus, and there are structures similar to fish gills on both sides of the head, called branchial cleft. With the continuous development of the baby, these branchial fissures will gradually merge until they disappear completely. If, for some reason, the first and second branchial cleft are not completely closed during development, preauricular fistula will appear after the baby is born. This disease usually occurs alone, but a few people are more serious, accompanied by congenital malformations such as cleft palate, hypoplasia of accessory auricle and auricle, hereditary deafness and so on. Preauricular fistula has obvious genetic tendency, and girls are more common in boys. It is usually a blind tube with one end open in front of the ear and the other end closed.

However, a few serious fistulas have many branches and are widely distributed, and even can pass through the foot of helix or auricle cartilage to reach the junction of cartilage and bone of external auditory canal or behind the ear, causing infection. What harm does preauricular fistula have to the baby? Most patients with preauricular fistula usually don't feel any discomfort. However, because there are hair follicles, sebaceous glands and sweat glands in the inner layer of fistula, there are often exfoliated epithelium in the lumen. If the fistula in front of the ear is infected, these exfoliated epithelium will be mixed with bacteria to form scales or bean dregs-like substances, and the ear will repeatedly show redness, swelling, heat, pain and pus, which will make people feel itchy, or a small amount of white or smelly secretions will flow out when pressing the small hole.

How does the baby have a fistula before the ear? For asymptomatic preauricular fistula, treatment is generally not needed, but care should be paid attention to at ordinary times. When washing your face, wash your ears with clear water. Wipe the surrounding water with a cotton swab after washing, but don't use too much force. Don't let the baby rub it at ordinary times, so as not to bring bacteria into the fistula and cause infection. In diet, it's best to eat less spicy and irritating food and don't eat seafood and other hair products. For pruritus, secretion overflow or secondary infection, antibiotics can be used for anti-infection treatment under the guidance of a doctor. If the preauricular fistula is secondary to abscess, incision and drainage of abscess are needed. After the infection was controlled, fistulectomy was performed. Because once the preauricular fistula is infected, it is easy to relapse, and it will also cause scar adhesion, which will make the drainage more unsmooth, and eventually form a pus fistula and scar, and even cause auricle deformation. Therefore, it is best to completely remove the fistula through surgery. Preauricular fistulectomy is just a small operation for doctors, which is safer and takes less time. However, if the course and distribution of fistula are complicated, it may increase the difficulty of operation, and may even recur because of incomplete resection.

So this preauricular fistula has little to do with "the life of the rich"! Not only that, parents should also help the baby care for this small hole to avoid infection and affect his health.