Objective:To investigate the safety and efficiency of depilation with intense pulsed light (IPL) in congenital microtia patients during different phase of reconstruction treatment sessions.Methods:The hairy skin was treated with the M22TM system (Lumenis, German) using a filter of 695-1 200 mm. A three pluses mode of the radiant setting with a pulse width of 3.5 ms, a delay of 60 ms, and an energy density of 16-18 mJ/cm 2 was applied in the expanded patients. Depilation efficacy was evaluated as follows: excellent (hair density reduction >75%), good (50%-75%), fair (25%-50%), and poor (<25%). The depilation effect was compared between different phases. And the adverse effect was observed. Results:A total of 131 cases were included. There was no difference of the hair density reduction between patients with different expander volume after same IPL depilation treatments [15 (13-19) vs. 16 (15-19) root/cm 2, Wilcoxon rank analysis]. The hair density reduction in the expansion group was lower than the non-expansion group after two IPL depilation treatments [15 (13-19) vs. 17 (15-21) root/cm 2, P<0.05, Wilcoxon rank analysis]. The depilation efficacy was highly related with the numbers of IPL depilation treatments the patients received [Kendall′ stat b=0.74 (95% CI: 0.71-0.77), P<0.05]. There were 3 cases of folliculitis, 2 cases of blisters occurred in this study, and no expander exposure and cartilage absorption were observed. Conclusions:Hair removal with IPL is a safe and effective photo-epilation method during all stages of ear reconstruction using tissue expander. The volume of the expander does not significantly affect the hair removal efficiency. Depilation in the expansion phase is more efficient than that in the non-expansion phase, and the ideal result of " hair-free" or " less hairy" reconstructed ears can be achieved in 5 treatments, with suboptimal results in 3 treatments.