Cryotherapy: A Successful Monotherapy for Earlobe Keloids.

A keloid represents an excessive overgrowth of skin beyond the boundaries of an injury. Earlobe keloids usually follow ear piercing and can become large, sometimes producing remarkable disfigurement. Surgical excision, pressure dressing, intralesional corticosteroid injection, cryosurgery, radiation, and lasers have all been used to treat earlobe keloids. However, none has produced uniformly satisfactory results. Combinations of more than one modality have also been employed to yield successful outcomes. We describe cryotherapy as a single modality to treat seven-year-old, multiple earlobe keloids. Three cryotherapy sessions with two freezing-thawing cycles of 30-40 seconds' freezing time and two minutes' thawing time, undertaken one month apart, resulted in complete flatness of the keloids and no recurrence after 5 years. We also evaluate keloid-related and operational factors that determine the success of cryotherapy as a monotherapy for earlobe keloids. © Academy of Family Physicians of Malaysia.