The pinna contributes enormously to the facial aesthesis. Lesions affecting the pinna can lead to overt disfigurement
and change the entire appeal of the face. Auricular seroma, also known as pseudocyst of the pinna, is an asymptomatic
condition of unknown etiology affecting the pinna, commonly encountered in middle-age men. Most reports of
auricular seroma have involved Chinese or white patients; however, people of all racial groups have been affected.
It was first reported by Hartmann in 18461 and first described in the English literature in 1966 by Engel.
This rare disorder results from spontaneous accumulation of a sterile, oily yellowish fluid, resembling olive oil.
It mostly presents clinically as a solitary, fluctuant, noninflammatory swelling of the upper portion of the auricle with normal overlying skin. Histopathology reveals an intracartilaginous accumulation of fluid without an epithelial lining.
The lack of epithelial lining led to the term pseudocyst. The differential diagnoses of the auricular seroma are chondrodermatitis chronic helices, relapsing polychondritis, and subperi