Earwax, that yellow, sticky substance your ears produce, is a hot-button topic in the ear care community. Like many others, you might have grown up hearing that you should regularly clean your ears with cotton swabs, only to find out as an adult that doing so could cause a burst eardrum, damage to the ear canal, hearing loss or greater blockages.
While it’s true that attempting to remove earwax at home using unsafe tools like cotton swabs or even your fingers can harm your ears, that doesn’t mean you have to live with an earwax blockage forever.
Identifying an Earwax Blockage
Earwax blockages present with one or more of the following:
- Muffled hearing
- Tinnitus
- Feeling of fullness in the ear
- Itchiness in the ear
- Pain or pressure
- Fluid discharge from the ear
- Dizziness
If you notice one or more of the above symptoms, don’t worry. There are a few ways to remove earwax blockages safely.
The Key to Safe Removal
There are a couple of ways we remove earwax in the office:
- Irrigation. We can use irrigation to rinse your ear canal with saline or water. Think of it like spraying water in a cup to remove something stuck to the bottom.
- Manual removal. We can use a cerumen spoon, forceps or a suction device to remove earwax from the ear manually.
Patients who tend to develop a lot of earwax blockages can use at-home earwax removal kits, available at most Las Vegas drugstores, with a softening solution and suction bulb to clear the wax without causing damage. A few reasons you might develop frequent blockages include:
- You wear hearing aids, earbuds or earplugs
- You have skin conditions like eczema
- You insert cotton swabs, fingers or other small items into the ears
- You have excess ear hair
- Your ear canals are misshapen
- You have developmental disabilities
- You’re over 55 years old
If you’re nervous about using a kit or if it doesn’t pull any wax from your ear, give us a call at Nevada Ear + Sinus Institute today to schedule an appointment with one of our specialists. We’ll conduct an ear exam to ensure you have wax that needs removing and walk you through softening and syringing it out of your ear.
Call Nevada Ear + Sinus Institute at (702) 735-7668 for more information or to schedule an appointment.