Ear Infections

This is happy news!

Ear infections are uncomfortable for both the babies who have them and their parents whose nights are disrupted, but new research shows that fewer American babies are getting ear infections compared to 20 years ago.

The researchers followed 300 newborns through their first year. Almost half of them had at least one infection during that year. This is a big drop since the 1980s and 90s. The number of babies with ear infections during the first three months of life dropped by two thirds. Good news indeed.

This decline did not surprise lead researcher Dr. Tasnee Chonmaitree. Here’s why:

VACCINES: There is a vaccine that’s been available for a few years (the pneumococcal conjugate vaccine) that protects against several strains of bacteria which can cause serious illness such pneumonia and meningitis. These bacteria are also major causes of children’s middle ear infections.

Also, annual flu shots are now recommended for babies and children. These may help too, as ear infections may arise following a viral infection like the flu or common cold.

So it may be that these recommended vaccines have an additional benefit of driving down the rate of ear infections in babies and children.

BREAST FEEDING: Exclusive breast feeding during the first six months helps lower the rate of ear infections. There are a few reasons: Breast milk contains antibodies that can protect the babies against infections. Also, breast fed babies spend less time feeding from a bottle while on their backs. That position may make some babies more vulnerable to infections. The author said “breast feeding is good and should be encouraged to do it if they can.”

CIGARETTE SMOKING: Smoking cigarettes is down, and although the number of babies in the study is too small to clearly implicate second hand smoke, the researchers believe that the impressive reduction in smoking in the last few decades has had a positive effect on reducing the incidence of ear infections in young children.

Mild Hearing Loss

A few weeks ago I had a bout of garden-variety external otitis, or “swimmer’s ear.”  I ignored it for about a week, and when my home remedies did not help, I sought treatment by an otologist.   It resolved quickly after that, and now I’m back in the pool and hearing fine.  But I learned a lesson during the time that my hearing was muffled.  While my hearing was off I had perfectly normal hearing in my left ear, and a mild conductive (plugged-up) hearing loss in my right ear.  That doesn’t sound bad, does it?  But, it was more tiring than I would have anticipated.

These are some of the problems I noticed:

I had trouble telling where sounds were coming from, as the hearing symmetry was off-kilter.

I was missing some of the soft high frequency consonant sounds that define words – I found myself almost reflexively asking “what?”

When the pace of the conversation was fast, I had even more trouble.

As an audiologist I speak with different people all day long – it is important to me that I hear my patients accurately so that communication is accurate, and I don’t need to interrupt the conversation to ask for clarification.  Even with this little degree of hearing loss I was guessing and straining.  I found my brow was wrinkling up as I worked to hear.

Soft and distant sounds were challenging to hear.  By the end of the work day I was ready for the quiet of my home.

If you doubt this degree of difficulty, you can try this at home.  Insert one (or two) foam ear plugs, and ask someone to recite a list of short words: fish, dish, six, fist, fifth, sits, sit, etc.  How did you do? Try it again with the radio or TV on. More challenging?  Next, try it without the visual help you get from looking at the speaker.  Now with another speaker also reading some words… this can be really difficult. 

Imagine you are listening like this all day long, every day.  It can be done, but you would be using effort better spent on enjoying and responding to what you are hearing.

My lesson is that even what I think of as a mild hearing loss can significantly interfere with ease of communication.  Some patients with mild hearing loss may not perceive day-to-day challenges. But many do, as I did,  and they are real.  Each patient is unique, and for many people with even mild hearing loss, there is a simple appropriate solution to make every day communication easier, more accurate, and fun.