What is otitis media?
Otitis media is the infection of the middle ear cavities. There is a time in life that is infantile, from the year to 7 years old approximately, in which these children are especially vulnerable to this type of infections, because they are small, because immunologically they are weaker, because they catch colds a lot and there are a series of circumstances that condition this fact.
What should alert parents?
Normally the type of consultation that we have is on the one hand typically the child who presents ear pains, they are usually recurrent pains and in the first instance we treat them with antibiotics, but then there is a group of children in which the otitis does not present itself in such a florid form and they are children who present themselves as distracted, children who are nervous, at school they alert us that they do not follow the classes well and the parents sometimes notice a lack of attention, a child who is absent-minded. And all this in a child who also gets a lot of colds, who has a lot of mucus, should alert us to ananize the hearing so that there are no lifelong sequelae.
How is otitis media diagnosed?
The otitis media obviously has to see the clinical part that we have discussed above and, subsequently, our role will be first to determine whether there is disease through a microscopic analysis of ear can see the state of the tympanic membrane and will give us great information about it, and on the other hand some audiological tests that can determine whether or not there is a decrease in hearing. It is clear that in children to perform an audiometry is not easy, they are tests that require collaboration and therefore there are some very specific and special tests for the child that will determine their hearing levels. All this together will indicate us what we have to do with each child, there will be problematic children and with a great affectation of the ear and others with little. In total of all this, in some cases it will be determined that we will do a medical treatment, of control, of evolution and in others perhaps we will have to opt for surgical treatment to solve the problem definitively.
What is the treatment?
The first treatment of middle ear infections is with antibiotics, usually given in the emergency room for an otitis or given by the pediatrician and, subsequently, if we move to the phase in which the situation becomes chronic we have, in many occasions, to resort to surgical treatment which is simple, is to insert a ventilation tube in the tympanic membrane, the fact of entering air heals all the mucosa of the middle ear and this allows us to completely recover the functionality of the same. This drainage will be in place for about 8 months and will spontaneously pop out.
Can we achieve a complete recovery?
Yes, of course we can. We perform all this to avoid any type of sequelae in the child’s ear that may remain for the rest of his or her life. The cure is for practically all children, we have a 90% success rate. Evidently there are children who are more difficult with whom we have to insist on treatment, but the good evolution is what marks the rule for all this type of pathology.