A Discharging Ear: Something Worse Than Just Ear Infection?

If you have been having ear discharge or ear pain, you should get it checked out as early as possible by your top ENT specialist in Singapore. Ear discharge (having wet liquid leaking out of your ear) is not normal at all and may be a sign of ear infection. However, ear discharge may be related to more serious ear problems like a cholesteatoma (destructive sac of skin inside the ear).

If you swim regularly, there is a higher risk of ear infections as water enters the ear and may lead to inflammation of the skin inside the ear. Wearing swim plugs to prevent water from entering your ears may be helpful in reducing the risk of ear infections. The weather in Singapore is rather humid, which also makes it easy for you to suffer ear infections in Singapore, especially fungal ear infections, which tend to present with a lot of ear itching and ear pain. Ear infections can also present with a blocked ear.

Sometimes, after a bad flu or cold, the nose or sinus infection may spread to the Eustachian pressure tube which links the back of the nose with the space behind the eardrum. If the eardrum becomes infected too, then the space behind the eardrum may become filled with infected fluid which may burst through the inflamed eardrum to leak out from your ear, yet another reason for ear discharge.

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As an ENT specialist in Singapore who looks after many ENT patients with ear problems, I have diagnosed and managed many patients who turn out to have more serious ear conditions such as cholesteatoma (see picture above). The picture shows a large hole in the right eardrum with a whitish growth seen behind the eardrum: Cholesteatoma. Cholesteatoma is a benign (non-cancerous) but extremely destructive skin cyst which grows behind the eardrum and eventually destroys the surrounding important ear structures. For example, if cholesteatoma destroys the ear bones (ossicles), then hearing loss will result, which is often permanent. If the cholesteatoma (benign but destructive ear cyst) destroys the inner ear where the delicate ear nerve endings are located, then permanent complete hearing loss and dizziness with imbalance will result. Ringing sounds in the ear (tinnitus) can also occur as a result of the cholesteatoma damaging the hearing in your ear.

The problem with having a cholesteatoma in your ear in Singapore is that it will not go away by itself and will only continue to grow larger to cause more problems like persistent ear discharge and ear infections. Rarely, the the cholesteatoma goes on to destroy the bony area which normally separates the brain above from the ear itself. In such cases, there is a real risk of the ear infection spreading to the brain to cause serious life-threatening complications, like meningitis (infection of the brain lining) and brain abscesses (pools of infected pus forming in brain tissue). Having a cholesteatoma in your ear means the only way to treat it is to have ear surgery to remove it. The name of this surgery is mastoidectomy as it involves entering the mastoid bone (the hard bone behind your ear) to completely remove the cholesteatoma which has often grown into the mastoid region. You shouldn’t delay having surgery to remove the cholesteatoma because the cholesteatoma  is easy to remove when small. When the cholesteatoma grows bigger, it tends to extend into all the different corners of the ear which makes it more challenging to ensure complete removal of the ear disease.

For more detailed information about ear infections and other troublesome ear conditions, please click on this link:https://www.drannabelle.com/ear-hearing-ent-specialist.html

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