Most parents are doing it wrong when it comes to cleaning their children's ears

Author: Yan Shang, attending physician at Shenzhen Children's Hospital, PhD

Reviewer: Pan Hongguang, Chief Physician, Shenzhen Children's Hospital

Have you noticed?

Picking ears is always so addictive.

It was like finding a "treasure", especially when I took out a large piece of earwax.

It is truly one of life’s great pleasures!

But you know what?

Cleaning your child's ears may cause hearing loss!

Do you still dare to act rashly?

Figure 1 Copyright image, no permission to reprint

1. Picking children's ears often leads to "bloody incidents"

Is it good to clean children's ears? Let's take a look at a short story first.

Not long ago, Xiaohua always felt itchy in her ears. Her brother Xiaohu, imitating the adults, volunteered to pick up a cotton swab to clean Xiaohua's ears. However, Xiaohu accidentally fell and the cotton swab in his hand pierced Xiaohua's ear canal. Xiaohua immediately felt severe pain and blood flowed from her ears.

When Xiaohua was sent to the hospital, she could no longer hear in her injured ear. The doctor found that the cotton swab had punctured Xiaohua's eardrum. Fortunately, after surgery, her hearing was basically restored to normal.

Examples like this are not uncommon. Some parents see their children have earwax and can't help but take action. In fact, doing so is very dangerous.

1. It is easy to damage the eardrum or even perforate the eardrum

Children's ear canals are small and shallow, and ordinary cotton swabs are too thick and can easily push earwax deeper, causing hearing loss and may even damage the eardrum and cause permanent damage.

If the child moves around when cleaning his ears, the parents may accidentally injure the eardrum or auditory bones with the cotton swab or ear spoon, causing perforation of the eardrum.

2. Damage to the external auditory canal and cause infection

Some parents use too much force and pick their children's ears only by feeling, which may damage their children's external auditory canal. In addition, some families share ear picks, which also poses a high risk of cross-infection. If ear picks are placed together with items such as nail clippers, bacteria from the feet may be brought into the ear canal, causing infection and inflammation.

2. Why does cleaning your ears feel so good?

The reason why cleaning your ears is so enjoyable is that the ear canal is very sensitive and rich in nerve fibers. When the ear pick and cotton swab are rubbed in the ear canal, it feels like touching other sensitive parts of the human body, and it will produce a strong tingling and satisfying feeling. After cleaning your ears, recalling the soul-leaving experience just now, what else in this world can't be forgiven? !

3. You can’t just clean your ears whenever you want.

According to incomplete statistics, more than 60% of children who suffer from ear canal infections each year are caused by improper ear cleaning. Among them, many problems arise after parents clean their children's ears.

Figure 2 Copyright image, no permission to reprint

There are always children with external otitis in the ENT clinic. When asked, most of them are caused by parents cleaning their children's ears. There are more such children during winter and summer vacations and holidays. It may be that parents are busy and can't take care of their children. When they have free time, they see that their children have a lot of earwax and can't help but help them clean it. But the truth is, the more times you clean your child's ears, the more earwax he will have!

The scientific name of earwax is cerumen, which is the secretion of the cerumen glands in the external auditory canal. If you often clean your child's ears, the stratum corneum of the skin in the external auditory canal will swell more easily, blocking the hair follicles and allowing various bacteria to enter.

Once the skin of the ear canal is damaged, long-term chronic congestion will stimulate the cerumen glands to secrete earwax more vigorously, resulting in more and more earwax.

In fact, a small amount of earwax is not only harmless, but also very beneficial:

1. Block foreign matter from entering the ear canal: When dust enters the ear canal, earwax will stick to it. If small flies fly into the ear, the obstruction and smell of earwax will make them retreat.

2. Inhibit the growth of bacteria: Earwax is rich in fatty acids, which form an acid film on the surface of the ear canal skin, making the external auditory canal in an acidic environment that is not suitable for bacterial growth.

3. Reduce strong sound waves: The eardrum of a child is thinner than a cicada's wing and very delicate. When a strong sound wave such as thunder or firecrackers rushes directly into the ear canal, the eardrum may be damaged or even ruptured, leading to hearing loss. Earwax can protect the eardrum.

4. Prevent water from entering the ears: When children take a bath or swim, a small amount of water enters the ears. Earwax can form a waterproof wall to prevent water from entering the inner ear, avoiding diseases such as inflammation of the external auditory canal or otitis media.

Figure 3 Copyright image, no permission to reprint

4. How to deal with excessive earwax?

Seeing this, some parents may have begun to worry:

"My child's ears are full of earwax, what should I do?"

"I just used a cotton swab to gently clean the child twice. Should it be okay?"

"The ears are clogged with earwax. The child couldn't hear me when I called him these past two days!"

Indeed, there is some truth in the saying that too much earwax will affect the conduction of sound and lead to hearing loss. However, doctors still recommend that parents try not to clean their children's ears on their own.

Earwax usually appears in the 1/3 of the external auditory canal, which is visible to the naked eye. This earwax generally does not make children feel uncomfortable, or even feel it at all. Moreover, most earwax will be discharged automatically with the movement of the mandible, such as talking, eating, and yawning, and will fall off automatically with various metabolic wastes.

If there is too much earwax in the ears and the child is itchy, parents should not use unclean matchsticks, hairpins, keys or metal ear picks to pick the ears, so as not to irritate the ear canal and cause inflammation. However, if there is too much earwax and it gradually forms a hard mass that blocks the external auditory canal, causing the child to have symptoms such as tinnitus, ear pain or even dizziness, then you need to take the child to a regular hospital to see an otolaryngologist for treatment.

There is nothing trivial about the ears.

Although the vast majority of patients with ear damage

There was no permanent hearing damage.

But there are serious patients

Lost my hearing forever.