ENT Problems Still Need to be Treated during Covid-19 Lockdown

Even though Singapore is going to go through one month of lockdown in April 2020 to try to prevent further spread of the Covid-19 (coronavirus) viral infection, our ENT specialist clinics in Singapore continue to remain open to provide an Essential Service. Many patients suffering from ear, nose, sinus and throat infections will still present acutely with severe pain and swelling, discharge from nose or ears, fever, cough, and difficulty breathing.

The picture above shows the inflamed ear of one of my patients, who had been suffering from severe right ear pain and swelling with foul-smelling ear discharge for more than a week. The patient was too worried at first about the Covid-19 lockdown situation to turn up to see me earlier but finally, when she could no longer tolerate the pain, she came to have her ear checked out at our ENT clinic. She turned out to have a rather bad case of otitis externa (ear canal infection) which had led to almost complete blockage and swelling of her ear canal, making it difficult for her to hear. The ear pain had also been keeping her up at night, making it hard for her to sleep, even with painkillers. The course of antibiotics tablets given by her GP hadn’t helped much.

What she really needed was to have her ear properly cleaned out and examined, with the right medications applied inside. If patients are also diabetic, then infections, especially ear infections, need to be treated properly and quickly to prevent the infection from spreading to the underlying bone and nearby brain with more serious complications.

Ear pain can be very severe and in some children with ear infections, the eardrum is affected and may be so painful that they scream in pain. The same can be said for headaches and facial pain due to severe sinus infections, some cases can be so excruciating that you literally feel like crying.

So even in this time of lockdown, if you need to see a doctor for your acute ENT infection or a flare-up/relapse of your existing ENT condition, don’t put it off: You should still see your ENT specialist in Singapore to prevent your condition/infection from worsening which could lead to potentially more serious complications.

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