hi everybody this is rhys barber from
audiology associates thanks very much
for watching our ear wax removal video
today
you can see this patient's come in
lovely lady
feeling really blocked up bless
her not hearing very well out of this
ear canal
at all you can see we've got a very
narrow canal entrance here as well so
this is actually the fine end we're
using here
just to try and lift this ear wax off the
canal wall but this ear wax is super
sticky so it's not really budging
particularly well
you can see we're having to use the
endoscope just to prop the canal open
here just to try and accommodate the
standard size zoellner tube
and it's quite a big old tube in here so
we do have a different tool we're going
to use today now i know you guys
have seen a tool like this before if
you've ever watched conor's channel as
well you'll have see one
coming up there but you can see with
this we're really trying to
rock this ear wax trying to pull it off
the canal walls and work this out
but it is just super sticky
and it's just drawing as we draw this
out you'll see actually just
stretches out to the canal so it's a
really funny consistency this one
it looks quite hard on the outside edge
but it's not actually it's really quite
runny on the inside i'm trying to think
of like molasses
that would probably be a good
consistency for this one so as you pull
it stretches or
or syrup here in the uk that
stretchy consistency you get to it
very difficult one to
remove especially when you can't get the
suction tube in
really smoothly just inside the ear
canal so this is what they call an
infant scoop now it's made by a company
called bionix now i saw this being used
on conor's channel recently and i
thought you know what that looks like a
really good idea now i've never used one
of these before this is the first i've
ever used one basically what we have
is with the jobson horn you have a hole
so you can be able to see through it
but with this one we don't we have its
completely closed off at the end and it
forms this little spoon shape this
little
basically this little scoop shape
which is great for this type of
ear wax thats soft and sticky because if you
try and pull this out with
a jobson horn what's going to happen as
you pull through
the sticky ear wax is just going to go
through the center it's just not really
going to do a great job of getting this
out
but with the scoop attachment on this
one with that scooped end on it
it's really helpful for pulling this
down and the size as well is really
handy because it's
much much smaller i will show you the
size of this a bit later i'll put it up
against the ruler so you can see it so
stay tuned if you wonder how big this
thing is
but basically that really helps us
with these narrow ear canals
but what i'm finding here it's really
good for going in and scooping that ear wax
out but what you've got is because
you've got this domed end
obviously because it's a spoon shape
it's quite wide in relation to the the
size of the canal
as you're pushing this in the softer ear wax
is actually getting pushed back so what
i'm opting to do here
is use a combination of the two so use a
bit of suction to position the ear wax in a
good
position on the outer part of the ear
canal and then use that infant scoop
then to go
over the top and draw this out so what
you can see here is i'm
lifting trying to pull this across to
the center of the ear canal entrance
here
just trying to work it down as close as
i can to the entrance
so we've got a better chance when we put
the scoop over the top of drawing this
down
so there we are you can see we've got
quite a big chunky bit there you know if
we can get this out using suction great
but as you can see when you try and
get it out it just gets to the outer
part of the ear canal
and then just starts to break away again
so we're just gonna reposition this
again now
there we are you can see just how much
it's
holding on to that entrance it really
doesn't want to come away easily from
this ear canal
so we'll go back to the scoop now in a
second we're just going to draw this out
a little bit further
you can see the whole side of the canal
the entrance the canal they're just
moving as we're trying to pull this one
because it's so firmly attached
see how it stretches out of this ear
canal here
there we are just lifting from the top
trying to draw this down
you can see it's that sticky it's
actually sticking to the underside of
the zoellner tube as well here
here we are just try to draw as much of
this down
what i'm doing here with the suction
tube because it is quite sticky that's
drawing it forwards
as we pull this out
the front facing side of
the ear wax
it's drawing the deeper ear wax further down
the canal so while it's still
doing that and it's actually coming away
we'll stick with the suction
but as soon as it starts to get to that
really blocked up
there we are you can see we've got quite
a big piece here but it's firmly
wedged in that canal so perfect now for
the scoop to go over the top
do its job and just draw this forwards
you can see we're actually taking away
chunks of this ear wax there we are look how
that stretches though could you see that
long
filament of stretchy ear wax stretching
behind the
the infant scoop here so just drawing
this down there we are scooping this
next section
you can see how this is far better for
removing that much more sticky
type ear wax that we've got going on
here
there we are perfect and then
now we've got that big chunk away from
the entrance here you can see we've got
this little bit of ear wax stuck to the
canal wall
so let's just reposition this down try
and draw this out of the canal if we can
using the suction
obviously the last thing we want to do
is put the infant scoop in and push this
further back but now we got to the outer
part of the ear canal we've got our
Infant scoop again
there we go it's drawing this down just
very slowly working this out
you know this is the one thing we talk
about i know a few people in the
comments
have you ever used this tool you've ever
used that tool we're constantly learning
as audiologists you are
constantly perfecting your technique and
trying other tools and i
thought this was a really good
tool when i saw it on conor's channel
so i thought i'd give this a go and see
how it works and it actually works
really really well
you know for this particular type of
ear wax it's worked very
well in this particular ear canal
so yeah it's always a case of learning
new techniques learning to use new
tools
you can't stand still as an
audiologists you're always changing
things all the time it's a
very fast evolving discipline
audiology
so you can see now we're just starting
to take away these pieces on the outside
edge we've got this little
layer of ear waxes come out we can see the
eardrum there looking a little bit dull
so
so yeah probably just slightly drawn in
there it doesn't look like it's got that
nice
bow and sheen to the front using the
infant scoop now just to clear up around
the outside edges here
which is doing a good job there we go
just going to clean that off and just go
back in now
just clean the last remnants off
here there we go just around the outside
edge
and we'll take a look in again there we
go there's the eardrum there you can see
the light reflex should be pointing down
to this bottom left corner
but it's just not quite there so this is
what we removed you can see
how all these pieces came away here
there's also a tank shot to this one so
we've got four centimeters
two inch and three quarters i
would say that is there
so quite a bit came away of the stretchy
type ear wax
there's also stuff that went into the
tank because when we were pulling this
out with the suction
lots of those little pieces got sucked
inside the machine as well so you can
see there's the tank shot there
i did warn everybody who's going to
Be a tank shot before i did it so you can
see the little bits floating around at
the bottom
so this is the size of the infant scoop
so you're talking what's that one two
about two mm
just under a sixteenth of an inch so
you're talking a very very small
tiny little spoon you can see that we're
using here it worked actually
worked really well
well guys i hope you enjoyed that video
and seeing our new tool if you do want
to see us use a few more new bits and
pieces
let me know in the comment section below
and we'll see what we can do for you
but as always guys take care of
yourselves take care of your ears and
take care of one another
and i'll see you again real soon bye
everyone