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A Pain in the Ear
The Ins and Outs of Ear Tube Surgery Part Two
By Teri Brown
It's a terrible thing as a parent to have something wrong with your child that no one can fix. When the word surgery is used, it can be even more terrifying. For Sherri Chamness, a homeschooling mom from Turner, Ore., it was twice as terrifying knowing that the ear infections that had brought them to this point were having a permanent effect on her daughter's hearing.
"My daughter has had more infections than you can count," says Chamness. "I don't remember the names of all the drugs used. At one point, they told me that we could no longer use Penicillin, because her body was too use to it and had no effect on the infections." Chamness says the hardest part for her was knowing that there was no answer. "I wanted my daughter well, and no one could do that," she says.
Like many other parents, Chamness was faced with the option of continuing to battle with ear infections, which could lead to more hearing loss or getting tubes put in her daughter's ears.
Often times, it isn't six different ear infections, but the same one that refuses to completely clear up. Ear tubes are used to break this cycle, allowing the ears to completely drain and ventilate. The drainage removes any fluid in the middle ear, and the ventilation allows the lining of the middle ear to return to normal. "The tubes usually stay in for about a year," says Dr. Thomsen. "After that, they come out by themselves."
The surgical procedure for placing tubes in the ears has become one of the most commonly performed operations of any kind, perhaps, in part, because the procedure is so simple and so effective. The surgeon can reach the eardrum through the ear opening, which means there is no need to cut the skin.
A tiny tube, made of either plastic or metal and with a collar on both ends, is slipped through a tiny incision in the eardrum. This is done in an area that will not affect hearing. This pressure-equalization tube provides a temporary, extra Eustachian tube to allow bacteria and fluid to drain from the middle ear. The procedure has been in widespread use since 1954.