Health Blogs - Blog Top Sites Family Physician's Diary: SAVE YOUR YOUNGSTERS' EARS

Wednesday, September 17, 2008

SAVE YOUR YOUNGSTERS' EARS

http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/cgi/content/abstract/56/2/285


There're parents having had experienced the following awful stoy:
Their young child wakes up in the middle of night and cries like anything. She cant say a word or show her aching part. Nothing can soothe her. The parents are at a loss - who to call! Where to go! How can they find relief for their beloved!
If they can find medical help at that depth of night - OK.
If not, they are likely to see their child's ear watering in the morning and the pain gone.
That's the beginning of a damned nasty disease - chronic suppurative otitis media. The eardrum (tympanic membrane) of the affected ear gets perforated. Thin or thick nasty discharge dribbles out from the ear in almost every cold they catch. The perforation gets larger with time. Slowly hearing is diminished and lost at last.
How this awful event starts?
For a while we have to get to the anatomy of the ear. The ear has three parts: external, middle and internal. From the ear orifice to the drum is the external ear canal and beyond the drum is the middle ear. A narrow channel connects the nose to the middle ear and helps maintain the air pressure gradient between two sides of the ear drum. When this channel (Eustachian tube) gets blocked due to any reason, say common cold, fluid accumulates in the middle ear. This fluid creates pressure on the eardrum and the drum starts aching. that's why your child wakes up with aginizing pain.
only one or two drops of a decongestant nasal drop can save the child's ear or give you time to take her to a medical personnel in the morning.
Lay the child on your lap. Support her neck placing a hand behind it, tilt her head backwards and instill one drop of the decongestant in each nose. Held her in this position for ten minutes. This simple process will open up the blocked tube and drain the middle ear collection to relieve your kid's pain .
Dont forget to take her to a medical personnel for further help
.


Recommended  rading:
R. H. Schwartz, S. E. Stool, W. J. Rodriguez, and K. M. Grundfast
Acute Otitis Media: Toward a More Precise Definition
Clinical Pediatrics, September 1, 1981; 20(9): 549 - 554.
R. H. Schwartz, S. E. Stool, W. J. Rodriguez, and K. M. Grundfast
Acute Otitis Media: Toward a More Precise Definition
Clinical Pediatrics, September 1, 1981; 20(9): 549 - 554.

No comments: