Ear Keloid Removal Success: A Q&A from the Netherlands

Last updated: September 28, 2026

The following Q&A features a woman in the Netherlands who successfully had her ear keloid removed. Answers may have been edited for brevity and clarity.

Ear Keloid Removal Success

Question: What country are you from?

Answer: I live in the Netherlands, though I’m of Vietnamese heritage.

Q: What caused the keloid to form on your ear?

Answer: The keloid on my ear was formed through stretching my ears when I was younger. It’s a form of body modification by which I stretched my ears up to 18 mm. It was just my left ear that I stretched.

Question: How old were you when the ear keloid started to form?

Answer: I was 16 years old.

Question: What treatments on the ear keloid did you try that failed, and why do you think they failed?

Answer: At first I got it “treated” when I was 17. They decided to just treat it by excision. They removed it, stitched the wound and just let it be. The stitches became so tight that they resulted in two even bigger keloids. It is self-explanatory why only excision didn’t work because it is common that the recurrence rate is just high.

Question: What treatment worked on the ear keloid? Was anything different this time around that caused the treatment to work?

Answer: A year later, the keloid scar became even bigger and then I decided to go to the hospital again. I was treated by an ENT doctor (ear, nose, and throat) who was also a plastic surgeon and decided to treat it by excision but with injections of Kenacort once it was freshly healed. They waited 4 weeks for the scar to heal before using Kenacort. They used Kenacort 40 and I had 4 rounds in total. That continued for 3-4 months. The keloid became inactive and didn’t return. I did come back one time at a later date to do a preventative Kenacort shot.

Comments from the editor are below:

Kenacort Steroid Injections

Kenacort is a brand name for the corticosteroid triamcinolone acetonide (steroid injections for keloid scars). In the United States, Kenalog is a more commonly used brand among dermatologists, but it’s the same thing, just a different manufacturer with a different brand name. Triamcinolone acetonide is available in different concentrations, commonly ranging from 10 mg/mL to 40 mg/mL.

The appropriate concentration depends on the keloid’s size, thickness, and location. A concentration of 40 mg/mL is often used for thicker keloids, while lower concentrations may be preferred for smaller, thinner, or facial keloids.

In my personal experience treating chest and shoulder keloids in the United States, undiluted Kenalog-40 was necessary to flatten the scars. Undiluted simply means asking your doctor not to mix the Kenalog with anything else. In other words, the Kenalog would be injected undiluted, directly from the vial into the keloid scar. Lower concentrations were ineffective for me and only delayed improvement while wasting money.

For further information about using triamcinolone acetonide (steroid injections for keloid scars) you can check out this article:

Kenalog Steroid Injections For Keloid Scars

Keloid Surgery

As you can see, this woman’s first surgery was unsuccessful and the keloid grew back larger.

For large or bulky ear keloids, ear keloid surgery may be necessary. Surgical excision should be combined with postoperative triamcinolone acetonide injections to reduce the risk of recurrence. A concentration of 40 mg/mL is often appropriate.

For very small ear keloids, surgery may not be appropriate. Injections of Kenacort-40 or Kenalog-40 may flatten the keloid enough without excision.

The larger a keloid grows, the more complicated it can be to treat it successfully.