Why can you stick a cotton swab in your nose but you shouldn't stick a cotton swab in your ear? Another pressing question for the day asked by a reader.
My question is a two-part question.
Part A: Why is it wrong to stick a cotton swab in your ear but perfectly OK to stick one up your nose?
Part B: Do doctors ever use cotton swabs to clean their own ears? If not, how do you get the water and stuff out of your ears after a shower?
You shouldn't stick cotton swabs in your ears because you can injur your tympanic membrane. With that said, I personally have never seen it and have no idea how common that is. As for the cotton swab up the nose, I can't say I've ever heard of anyone doing this. But I can't think of any injury that may occur. There aren't any membranes in your nostrils that a cotton swab could damage (that I know of).
With that said, I do use cotton swabs to clean my own ears. I guess you could call me non compliant. But I can't say I ever have a problem with water in my ears. Perhaps my ear hairs have formed a nice barrier. Mrs Happy keeps them nicely trimmed.
I just barfed up my cheerios thinking of Mrs. Happy trimming your ear hairs. Where's your filter dude. In your previous post you went on and on about the thought processes of some almighty doctors never making it to the surface, you obviously were not talking about yourself.
ReplyDeleteI can't get the image out of my head. Must find my happy (not your blog) place now.
Thanks for sharing . . .
ReplyDeleteI'm a physician and have cleaned my ears weekly with cotton swabs for nearly 50 years without incident. You don't jam it in up to the hilt, just swirl it around the outer half of the ear canal. I've also cleaned my nose with cotton swabs, but far less frequently.
ReplyDeleteI have seen exactly one perforated TM due to a Q-tip. He was a rather exuberant 4 year old who wasn't exactly gentle, though.
ReplyDelete-Er Doc
I just barfed up my cheerios thinking of Mrs. Happy trimming your ear hairs.
ReplyDeleteUmm, you might want to consider another line of work if you are this squeamish.
Sorry Happy, but due to your high-risk lifestyle our new Public Health Plan will restrict your ENT evaluations.
ReplyDeleteDamaging the tympanic membrane isn't as likely as packing down (impacting) the cerumen up against the tympanic membrane (when someone puts the swab in too far). This is a big reason why you don't want to do this to someone -else- (say, in a long-term care environment) since inevitably there'll be both impacted cerumen -and- blood from some small skin-tear. Debrox doesn't work as well when this happens.
ReplyDeleteAs for the cotton swab up the nose, I can't say I've ever heard of anyone doing this.
ReplyDeleteI use the swab to apply petroleum jelly to my septum to make it less susceptible to bleeding. I got the tip off of some ENT's website. The procedure is most uncomfortable, but it does really help.
guess you don't have many otolaryngologists/otologists reading this blog!
ReplyDeleteCerumen is made in the outer 1/3 of the ear canal. The ear canal skin itself migrates laterally, thereby depositing cerumen in the conchal bowl where it may be removed with a washcloth.
Cerumen helps to keep the ear canal dry (being hydrophobic, it repels water and helps prevent it from entering the canal), and prevents infection by bacteriostatic/fungostatic action.
Qtips either remove too much wax, and abrade the delicate ear canal skin, allowing more water into the canal and bacterial/fungal overgrowth leading to otitis externa. Alternatively, all that wax gets pushed further into the call making a plug of cerumen as described by PM,RN.
As I tell my patients: They are your ears, do what you want. I'll keep cleaning out the impacted cerumen or treating the "recurrent" otitis externa....and it will help pay for my kids college!
If you stop using Q-Tips, (and running shower water into your ears to "clean" them), you won't have water stuck in your ears. If you get water in them, run a hairdryer over the canals (set to LOW heat) until they dry out....
I agree that perfed tm's are fairly unlikely though.