Emergencies due to a cotton swab stuck in the ear

A cotton swab stuck in the ear

“That morning, I had an important team meeting, in the presence of the deputy general manager. I might as well tell you that I was not a minute late in my preparation. Until the moment I saw the jar of cotton swabs. Lost in my thoughts, I use one which I insert deeply. Suddenly I feel resistance, I start to pull then I feel and hear a sound of disintegration. What I fear is confirmed at the second. where I take the stick out of my ear: the cotton is no longer on the stick, it has remained stuck As I listen to the radio every morning, it seems to me that Nicolas Demorand and Léa Salamé are speaking much less loudly. is false, obviously. I have a blocked ear, which causes me to lose hearing.

I wait for my roommate to get up to ask for help, tweezers in hand. As soon as he is up, he is given the right to a most delicate mission. Does he see anything? Negative response. Head to the general practitioner closest to me, whose office is supposed to be open. But he doesn’t answer. Alarm failure that morning? I will never know. I rush to the pharmacy, where they tell me that I need to go to the emergency room, which I do. I wait about half an hour until a caregiver informs me that this general emergency department does not prefer to take care of me. Without even looking at my ear canal, I was directed to the ENT emergency room, located 40 minutes away. Time flies, I warn my company. Provided that my colleagues do not specify the reason for my absence during the meeting…

I arrive at the ENT emergency room and quickly understand that my “emergency” will have to wait. And I can easily understand it: I’m not in pain, I’m just having trouble hearing. My imagination multiplies the scenarios. Will I have to have surgery? If this cotton cannot be removed from me, how will my body react to the foreign body? Should I fear for my hearing? So many questions to which I will have answers two hours later, when I am picked up. The caregiver looks bored. I have the feeling that this type of situation is common (information taken from an ENT a few years later, no it is very rare and even a myth. Did I tell him that I was this myth ?No of course, my shame and I kept this quiet).

The caregiver who takes care of me explains to me that the ears clean themselves, and that as such, cotton swabs are useless (which is incorrect, according to the ENT seen next, they are only useful for the outer pavilion and the very beginning of the canal, i.e. up to 0.5 mm maximum). All this, using long, thin tweezers while I have my head tilted to one side and a strong light shined on me. Fortunately, she manages to remove the cotton. Immediate relief! I have no after-effects or treatment. Just a good lesson to learn and a useful prevention story to tell.”

Is it serious to stick a cotton swab in your ear?

The answer is yes. A cotton swab inserted too deeply into the ear canal can puncture the eardrum. This can also, by pushing earwax and flakes of skin towards the bottom of the canal, create a blockage which will not only impair hearing, but also be the cause of an ear infection if it remains too long.

Sometimes it goes even further. Thus, in 2019, the misuse of a cotton swab almost cost an Englishman dearly, as reported by the British Medical Journal. While suffering from convulsions, headaches, nausea and pain in the left ear (which was oozing), this 31-year-old man was treated at the Coventry emergency room. After giving him antibiotics, the medical team gave him a CT scan, which revealed the presence of two abscesses inside his skull. After a cortical mastoidectomy (operation which -generally- consists of removing part of the bone located behind the ear) a foreign body could be removed. And it was nothing more and nothing less than cotton swab residue. It is indeed this little unwanted person who caused the infection, which spread to the meninges. The scientific publication specifies that 10 weeks after this intervention, the patient presented a good state of health, without neurological deficit or residual ear symptoms. As for the intracranial abscesses, they had completely disappeared. Enough to definitively ban cotton buds from the bathroom for this gentleman! Especially since the man had been complaining of intermittent pain and hearing loss to his doctor for more than five years, without seeing his state of health deteriorate as much as on the day of his hospitalization, which must have been immediate, as specified on the website of the regional daily L’Alsace.

You should definitely not try to remove a cotton swab or any other foreign body from an ear yourself. The risk of inserting the object even further is real, as is the risk of injury, particularly with tweezers. An immediate consultation with an ENT specialist should be carried out.