Cartilage Piercing Dangers: Beyond Infection – Precautionary Warning from a Cosmetologist

When I agreed to let my Australian friend, an exchange student in our tiny rural school double pierce my ears, that was considered just short of anathema. In Melbourne, my friend said this was very common. In rural Michigan in 1981 it was not. I only agreed to let her pierce my ears a second time so that she would not feel alone and ostracized! For a long time I was one of a tiny minority of people to have double pierced ears. I was one step closer, my friends and family believed, Satanism, ritual mutilations and Sex Pistol Sid Vicious’s safety pin pierced cheek apparently.

Obviously now just about anything can be and is pierced. There is a whole vocabulary related to piercing styles. I am not going to give any opinion on piercings nor am I going to discuss any social, moral or religious issues that some may believe are concurrent with piercings. I simply wish in this article to address one specific danger to consider with a certain kind of piercing known as cartilage piercing.

Our neighbor and friend is a licensed body piercer and cosmetologist. He’s practiced the trade for something like 30+ years. He has several gaugings in his ears and has had for several decades. When our daughter decided to pierce her belly button, we asked him about piercing care and safety. Naturally we discussed the care and cleansing of piercings.

His information was interesting and surprising. He asserted that flesh and skin piercings are generally completely harmless, but cartilage piercings however could be disastrous and deforming. Cartilage is the tough sturdy connective tissue that connects bone and muscle. It is flexible but quite hard. When the cartilage is pierced, such as an upper ear or nose piercing, it is easy for the cartilage to split, fracture or even shatter. Apparently cartilage does not mend in the same way as bone. Cartilage piercing is prone to swelling and can take longer to heal. This creates a vulnerability of the pierced site to infection.

Although not from cartilage piercing, I contracted a systemic, lymphatic infection from a tiny cut on my upper ear from where my glasses rubbed. Several of my nodes swelled to golf ball size, similar to goiter became terribly infected and painful. I had to undergo two separate surgeries to remove the huge boils that had formed quiet deep in my neck. I became very ill and literally lived on Advil, about 3200 mgs a day for several weeks. I have two unsightly scars on my neck.

Many people have healthy cartilage piercings, but with the possibility of problems, it may be better to be safe than sorry. Our neighbor, usually not a cautious person by nature, advised us to avoid cartilage piercing in general.