October 4, 2007

The week I saw a few clients, but for the second time I saw a person with tons of wax! Thi's man had so much wax that you could not see the tympanic membrane. We told him he should go to a doctor to have it removed since it was very deep in the canal and then come back to see us. The man did not seem to really care and said that he may "see us in 5 years". I doubt that he will go to the doctor or schedule his annual evaluation. Even though we tried to explain that the cerumen could effect his hearing, he really didn't seem to care.

So since this was my second time seeing someone with an excessive amount of wax, I thought I would look for an article on how it can effect a person's hearing. I found an article that discussed the role of impacted cerumen in hearing loss. The researchers conducted the study on 80 patients (109 ears). In the article, they classified impacted cerumen as more than an 80% occlusion with associated conductive hearing loss and an air-bone gap > 10 dB at two or more frequencies. The results from this study should that the impacted cerumen did cause the individuals to have a significant degree of conductive hearing loss. They did not find a correlation between the length of the wax plug and the severity of the hearing loss. They also did not find any correlation between the presence of impacted wax and the age, sex, ethniticy, or the side with the impacted wax. I thought this article was kind of interesting. An article like this could be provided to client's, like the one I had, to counsel them about why they should have the impacted cerumen removed.

Reference:
Subha, S.T., Raman, R. (2006). Role of impacted cerumen in hearing loss. ENT-Ear, Nose, & Throat Journal. (85)10, 650-653.
If you would like to read this article, please use the following link:
http://web.ebscohost.com/ehost/pdf?vid=5&hid=117&sid=6878c21c-00d7-48e0-a6f3-deb13655d59f%40sessionmgr103