It’s amazing what one finds in kids’ ears. More amazing are the explanations of how the ear foreign body (FB) came to be, from a mere shoulder shrug, to an “I dunno,” to a pointing of a finger at the giggling infant sibling sitting nearby in the baby carriage. The assumption of course is a self-inflicted event. Kids. Naturally, the parents are often baffled since--as with many happenstances concerning children--there were no eyewitnesses.
Usually after unsuccessful attempts at removal in the emergency room or urgent care clinic, they’ll arrive at our office practice. To alleviate problems such as ear pain, hearing loss, a complaining child and other annoyances, the foreign body should be removed. This is done under an operating microscope in the office with the use of nifty little tools to extract the unwanted foreigner (no ethnic offense intended). With really young kids who sometimes scream and kick when someone merely looks at their ear, this requires restraining the writhing child on the exam and viewing the moving target under the microscope. In the vast majority, the FB is successfully removed. In a few cases where every method under heaven-and-earth to stay the child is unsuccessful, rendering visualization and removal impossible, we then are forced to do this under general anesthesia. Of course, this requires a trip to the operating room (O.R.) where it’s much safer, with an anesthesia provider and O.R. staff.
The title photo above demonstrates a few examples from our “Collection” amassed over the years.
I’ve left out the FBs given back to the parents (pieces of toys, rocks, a small snail shell, etc.) and the biodegradable ones we’ve tossed, such as dead insects (I once removed an entire cockroach—all 6 legs still present—from one teenager’s ear. Occurred while she slept. Upon removal, I wanted to show her the dead roach but she literally ran out the room, out of the office and to her parked car, leaving her mother sitting in the exam room laughing). I also removed a head of a lady bug from O.R. nurse. She complained of feeling something in her ear, and swore it was a lady bug the she noted flitting by. After our last surgery, we (me and 5-6 other curious nurses and O.R. staff) brought her to an empty OR room, had her lie down on the operating table and brought in the operating microscope. And there it was, a small black speck on her ear drum, no larger than the period at the end of this sentence. It was a single compound eye from the insect! One by one, everyone viewed it under the microscope despite her repeatedly shouting, “Just remove the damn thing?” To my recollection, she discarded the little FB after its removal, admonishing us for taking so darn long.
The not-so-pleasant experience of FB extraction convinces the child to never, ever put stuff in their ears. Yet sometimes the lesson in not learned or unlearned, for I’ve had a few repeat offenders, with the same subtle smile, the shoulder shrug, and the “I dunno”. Poor parents.
©Randall S. Fong, M.D.
For more topics on medicine, health and the weirdness
of life in general, check out the rest of the blog site at randallfong.blogspot.com
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