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The association between renal anomalies and isolated preauricular tags (i.e., skin tags in front of the ear) in healthy newborns has not been thoroughly studied. These Israeli investigators identified 70 healthy newborns born over a 6-year period with isolated preauricular tags, performed ultrasound of the urinary tract on all of them, and compared them with 69 control infants. Infants with abnormalities detected by ultrasound underwent further imaging. Infants with other congenital anomalies or family histories of renal anomalies were excluded.
The incidence of tags was 4 per 1000. Six of the 70 infants (8.6 percent) with tags had urinary tract abnormalities, compared with none of the control infants. The abnormalities included vesicoureter…