This blog contains information about some health issues which we face in our life specially in today's world and some articles about common health problems.
Cauliflower ear also known as Boxer's Ear is a condition which occurs mainly in boxers, wrestlers and rugby players. This occurs due to repeated blow to the ear pinna following which there occurs a hematoma or blood clot or collection of fluid under the perichondrium. Perichondrium is the structure which supplies nutrients to the underlying cartilage. The hematoma formed separates the perichondrium from the cartilage leading to decreased nutrient supply to the cartilage. This leads to death of cartilage tissue which is later replaced by fibrous tissue causing a permanent swelling in the ear pinna.
Treatment is usually evacuation of hematoma, and antibiotics as it can get infected very often.
Prevention: Ear guard or headgear should be worn at time of these sports.
Surfer's ear is another name for exosteosis. It is common in people engaged in water sport. This is not the same as swimmers ear which is due to infection. This occurs due to constant irritation of external ear canal by cold water. This disease is usually bilateral and involves the bony part of external auditory canal.
Symptoms include decreased hearing or hearing loss, secondary bacterial infections and impaction of ear debris leading to further hearing loss.
Treatment: Drilling under general anaesthesia.
Prevention: Prevent water from entering the ear canal using ear plugs, or swim caps.
Now a days with the invention of portable music players, ipod, it is more sort of became a habit for many to wear headphones while working, walking, cooking, sleeping and sometimes even during pooping. They keep listening to their personalised music play list for hours and after some time they start having ear aches. So they start thinking that may be these headphones are bad and should be changed. Did you ever think that your ears can get fatigued so called listeners fatigue due to long hours of listening to music. Well it is a phenomenon by which your in ear headphones can harm your ears.
How do headphones harm your ear: Well to understand that we need to understand what is stapedial reflex. Stapes is a bone in our middle ear (smallest bone in our body) which transmits the sound via oval window to the inner ear from outside. Now this bone is connected to wall of middle ear by a muscle called stapedial muscle. Whenever we hear a loud noise this muscle contracts and pulls the stapes bone away from inner ear so that amount of sound entering the inner ear is decreased. This is a normal protective mechanism.
Now when we start listening to music via our headphones, specially the in ear ones, which totally clog the external ear canal, the sound seems a bit loud to our inner ear. So it sends a protective signal to muscle, which in turn contracts and thereby decreases the loudness reaching the inner ear. We think that the volume is low and we crank up the volume. This leads to increased workload to the muscle and at last it gets fatigued. Now when it gets fatigued the muscle no more contracts leading to all of the loud noise reaching to inner ear. This causes inner ear cells to die and leads to hearing loss.
What to Do??
Well 1st of all control the loudness of the device
Limit the usage of the device
Buy a good pair of noise cancelling headphones so that you don't have crank up the volume to listen to your songs or play lists.
Hope you liked the article here. Please do add any other information or suggestion in form of comments to help people live healthier.
Excessive earwax production is a fairly common problem in day today life. It may cause some hearing loss if it gets impacted, may cause infections, irritation in ear.
Ear wax is made up of secretions from sebaceous gland ( which are present in the outer 1/3 rd of external auditory canal), cerumin, hair, dird, desquamated cellular debris. It plays a protective barrier role in ear canal. It lubricates the ear canal and entrapes any foreign material that happens to enter the ear canal.
Normally a small amount of ear wax is produced which later dries up and is expelled out of ear due to movements of jaw. But in some people there is higher production of wax than normal which forms a plug. It may later dry up and form a hard impacted mass.
These people may complain of decreased hearing (as impacted wax causes a hearing loss of 30db), ringing in ear. They might develope some sort of infection.
Dont use ear buds to clean these impacted wax ( infacted ear buds should usually be avoided in general) as it may push the wax further inside the canal.
Do consult your doctor. He may advice to go through a procedure called Syringing in which luke warm water is injected in the canal an when water comes out it takes the wax plug out with it.
In case of hard impacted wax plug which is hard to remove by syringing it is softened by sodabicarbonate ear drops, hydrogen peroxide, liquid paraffin, or olive oil. Paradichlorobenzene 2% ear drop is available commercially.
These tests are use for assessment of hearing in an individual, hearing loss. We can also differentiate between conductive hearing loss and sensory hearing loss using these tests.
Hearing Pathway: The sound first reaches the tympanic membrane via external auditory canal then via auditory ossicles (Malleus, Incus, Stapes) reaches the cochlea from where VIIIth nerve takes the impulse and take to brain in the temporal lobe. The pathway till cochlea is the conductive pathway.
So now for the test we need tuning fork, 512hz frequency is ideal as lesser frequencies produce more vibration on the bone and the tone of higher frequencies decay faster.
Air Conduction: It the conduction via normal pathway as described above. It is usually better than bone conduction.
Bone Conduction: When we put the base of tuning fork on the mastoid, or middle of forehead the sound waves travel directly via cranial bones to the cochlea bypassing the normal pathway. This is called bone conduction.
Below is a video showing how to do a Rinne Test.
Now there are usually three tests that we use in Tuning Fork Test
Rinne Test: It is done using a 512hz tuning fork. 1st we check the bone conduction by ringing the tuning fork and then placing the base of the tuning for on mastoid process. Ask the patient whether he can hear a sound or not and if he can hear the sound then ask him to raise his hand or simply tell you when the ringing stops. Note that time. Then again hit the tuning fork and place it near his ears and repeat the same procedure.
Rinnes test is positive in normal people as Air Conduction > Bone conduction.
Rinnes Test is negetive In conductive hearing loss the BC>AC as there is problem in conductive pathway leading to decreased conduction but when we bypass the pathway via bone conduction the soun is percieved normally as cochlea is healthy.
Rinnes is positive in sensory neural hearing loss i.e. AC>BC but the duration of the ringing is reduced for both AC and BC, as cochleae is damaged so there is no bypass pathway left to carry sound energy to brain.
2. Webers Test: It is done by placing the tuning fork in the middle of the forehead of the patient. Then ask the patient on which side he can hear the sond better. In conductive hearing loss the sound lateralises to bad ear while in sensory neaural hearing loss sound goes to better ear
Cauliflower ear also known as Boxer's Ear is a condition which occurs mainly in boxers, wrestlers and rugby players. This occurs due to repeated blow to the ear pinna following which there occurs a hematoma or blood clot or collection of fluid under the perichondrium. Perichondrium is the structure which supplies nutrients to the underlying cartilage. The hematoma formed separates the perichondrium from the cartilage leading to decreased nutrient supply to the cartilage. This leads to death of cartilage tissue which is later replaced by fibrous tissue causing a permanent swelling in the ear pinna.
