In this video, I'm gonna show you just how dangerous it is
to try to clean the earwax out of your own ear canals
using a Video Endoscope, comin' up.
(cheerful music)
Hi guys, Cliff Olson, Doctor of Audiology,
and founder of Applied Hearing Solutions
in Anthem Arizona.
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information to help make you a better informed consumer.
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There is no limit to the amount of products
that people will try to use to pull earwax
outside of their own ear canals.
You everything from the Q-Tip,
which is probably the most common thing
that you would think of when people are trying to pull
earwax outside of their ears, but some people even use keys
to dig earwax out of their ears.
And then the really ambitious individuals
will buy some sort of funky product
that they can get online like this little corkscrew tool
there you're supposed to stick into your ear canal,
twist it and it's supposed to grab on to all of your earwax
and pull it out.
And then you have these little suction devices
that you can stick inside of your ear,
you turn it on and it actually vibrates as well,
and it has a little scooper on the end.
So you can try to dig out and suction out
all of your ear wax.
But perhaps the most intriguing device
that I have seen online that people will try to use
pull their earwax out is the Video Endoscope.
Basically a Video Endoscope is a camera
that has a little light on the end of it.
And these devices are designed to light up your ear canal
and then they attach these little wire loops on the end,
that you can use to try to dig
the ear wax outside of your ear canal.
Many of these companies show videos
of successful earwax removal.
Now I think removing earwax is satisfying,
but the actors in their videos,
are absolutely having a blast using this tool.
I mean their basically having an earwax removal party.
This particular tool works by connecting it to your computer
or smart phone which will theoretically
allow you to visualize your ear canal,
while safely removing the wax from your ear
using the wire loop.
And since since the advertisements clearly indicate
that using the Video Endoscope is a fun,
safe, and effective way to remove earwax
I figured that I would go ahead give it a try.
Of course, I invited back retired Nurse Practitioner,
Heather Wen, who you may recognize
from my Ear Candling Video.
Heather always has a healthy amount of earwax
for us to remove about every three months.
You can see here that she has built up a substantial
amount of earwax both in her left ear
and her right ear since the last time I removed it for her.
And since Heather is a Retired Nurse Practitioner,
who is very familiar with the anatomy of the ear canal,
if anyone has a shot at visualizing their own ear canal,
and removing their own earwax, it would be her.
After getting it set up with my smart phone,
I let Heather go ahead and give it a try.
Right. - And looking in ears,
I would be afraid that somebody would hurt themselves
doing this.
Cause I'm trying to go in carefully.
- [Cliff] Yeah.
- And, this is not easy, at all.
- [Cliff] Oh yeah.
So when I'm pulling earwax out,
I use a speculum.
And here, I'll let you grab that.
- Absolutely.
And look at the little amount, I mean..
- I know that's like nothing.
- This is a tiny amount to try to get that out.
And it's...
- [Cliff] How did Heather do?
Well basically, she made multiple attempts
trying to get the earwax outside of her ear canals
using the Video Endoscope loop.
But she wasn't able to get out any substantial amount.
She maybe pulled out a few little tiny specs of it,
that we had to wipe off of the loop when she was done.
But at the end of the day, it had no impact
on actually pulling the ear wax outside of her ear.
But since Heather was unable to remove the earwax
on her own, I figured that I would go ahead
and give it a shot with her permission.
What the heck?
- OK, so it's not just me, I feel better now.
(laughs)
- This is like the worst invention ever.
- Yeah so could ask a friend to help, but come on.
Now are all, or most of the ones
on the market like this one?
So this is similar to most of
the ones that are out there - Yeah, this is basically
what you can get on the market.
I fared much better with the tool,
but it wasn't because of the tool.
It was basically because I was trying to position
the loop in a way that would catch the most wax,
based on my experience of doing earwax removal.
And since the camera is so bad on this particular tool
I wasn't really sure how much wax came out.
I just know that some wax came out.
But since I'm a Licensed Audiologist
with years of training and earwax removal under my belt,
it wouldn't be a correct representation of a friend
or family member trying to remove earwax for you.
So, I went ahead and grabbed someone
who is completely inexperienced with earwax removal,
my front office assistant, Kris.
Under my very close supervision, Heather wanted Kris
to actually try to remove earwax outside of her ear,
to demonstrate if this is something
that someone with zero training could actually do
on a friend or family member.
And this is what happened.
Yeah, that is what we call pushing earwax
further inside the--
- Ouch.
- I'm sorry. - Not OK.
- No that's OK.
- No this is...you OK? - I'm good.
- OK, we knew this could potentially be a--
So naturally after Heather experienced pain
by Kris using this tool on her ear,
we decided to stop the experiment all together,
and don't worry, Heather's OK.
After the failed earwax removal attempt,
I safely removed Heather's earwax in the right ear.
I was also able to remove the remaining earwax
in her left ear, following the partial removal
using the Video Endoscope.
Here's a before shot of Heather's right ear canal
before using the Endoscope,
following professional removal of the wax
in Heather's right ear,
you can clearly see that Kris inadvertently
scraped Heather's ear canal and irritated her ear drum
by pushing the earwax into it.
You see, there were 2 main issues
that we had with the Video Endoscope.
Number one is that we couldn't actually see
what we were doing, which kind of defeats the whole purpose
of having a Video Endoscope.
The end of it was too big, if it's too big
you can't actually get it inside of your ear canal
so you can maneuver the little wire tip
on the end of it to try to get the ear wax out.
And you have no depth perception
because it only has a single camera.
You can't tell how far the earwax is inside of your ear
if you can even see it at all.
The second issue we had is the little metal curette
on the end of this thing, moves around too much.
So when you stick this inside of your ear
and you're trying to twist around to grab the earwax,
it just gets really flimsy and it makes it to where
you really can't even grab that earwax.
It is hard enough to pull earwax outside of your ears
using the proper instrumentation
that is very sturdy but when you put a real flimsy
piece of metal on the end of a Video Endoscope,
it doesn't work so well.
The moral of the story here is that
removal of earwax by an untrained professional
is extremely dangerous, and should never be attempted.
If Heather was unable, as a retired Nurse Practitioner
to remove her own earwax using a Video Endoscope,
what makes you think that you would be able to do it?
And while it would be great if tools like this
actually worked and saved you some money,
trying to get earwax outside of your ears,
it is a much safer option to spend a little bit of money
to periodically go in to your hearing care professional,
have them remove the earwax for you,
so you can save a lot of money down the road,
by not having a surgery to repair your eardrum.
That's it for this video, if you have any questions,
leave them in the comment section below.
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I'll see you next time.
(cheerful music)