Black growth after TECA-BO Surgery

Hello my dog has suffered from allergies since she was small and developed many ear infections since the age 2 and we were seen a specialist for almost a year and then attempt to save her ears that had become unresponsive to medication. She thought a long, hard fight, we all did and unfortunately she needed ablation of both ears. She had her first surgery November 16 last year, which went really well and then her second year a month later at the end of December we are three months postop and she’s done relatively well two weeks ago. I noticed the skin had darkened around her incision line. I reached out to the surgeon, concerned & they scheduled a recheck. They determined that it was normal when the folds of an ear are sewn together to have darkening of the skin, but that her ears looked incredible. Incisions was done remarkably well. They did note that she had a little bit of dermatitis developing in that groove in her ear and to clean it once a week. This appointment was 12 days ago and since then the little spot of darkening skin has spread about four times its original size. It now appears scabby and has developed a crust. I have emailed them and sent photos I am currently awaiting a response but I wanted to get an another opinion. The last photo is 12 days ago when I had taken her in for a recheck the first two photos are her ear and its current condition.

Hello - A lot of ear disease is actually skin disease.  That's what ears are:  they are essentially skin down a hole (the hearing apparatus is at the other side of the ear-drum in the bottom, and not directly involved, although closing the passage obviously affects the transmission of sound down there).  The skin lining the ear is sensitive and hard to access (even harder in breeds with restricted canals) and produces "wax" when it is inflamed.  Therefore, in animals prone to e.g. allergy-like inflammation, the ears can be where it shows up first.  Sometimes it reaches such an extent that the vets elect to remove the whole ear canal in order to stop it from happening any more.  This is ablation surgery.  What you seem to be describing is skin disease continuing over the closed ear wound.  Perhaps this is the condition returning again;  perhaps there is something more complex going on (e.g. the blood supply not making it to that area of the skin - although why that would happen after all this time, is hard to determine).   In some cases, cysts etc. form in the altered skin.  You sound to be doing exactly the right thing in returning to your vets to have this assessed.  Second opinions are usually given on the basis that the second vet has more information available to them that the first - either they are a specialist, or have useful equipment, or for some reason have more experience or see more cases.  I actually have less information and therefore I am not in a position to give you one, but your skin specialist sounds to be a good person to talk to.  If you want an outside opinion, they might be looking at sending you to another skin specialist.  I hope that something there helps.

This looks to be a gruelling and difficult case and I hope that they find a way to make that skin more comfortable.  Using a collar or similar to prevent self-trauma might be helpful - it might be that this is used in conjunction with a drug to stop any discomfort.  Please do contact your vets as soon as possible, because there may be a concern in some situations that the painful tissue might spread very fast.  Please do let us know how you get on.

PS Having reread, I can see that you haven't actually mentioned that the current change is itchy - if it isn't, it may be just as important to get to the bottom of what's going on here.  I do hope that they can help.