hi everybody my name is Rhys barber I'm the audiologist here at audiology
associates thank you very much watching our video today if you've never come
across one of our videos before or if you haven't looked at the channel before
what we do here is post ear wax removal videos we post new ones every Tuesday
and every Friday so if you have any questions about the video that you go to
watch then pop them into the comments section below and that way then the most
popular questions we can answer at the end of the week so enjoy the video and I
shall see you at the end
hi everybody this is Rhys barber from audiology associates thank you very much
watching our ear wax removal compilation video today we've got two patients in
this video so this is the first patient they've come through this gentleman's
got a little bit of mild discomfort reduced hearing in in both ears so what
we can see here is a dry piece of ear wax there just lodged in the ear canal you
can see how the ear canal isn't quite that kind of normal circular shape
you've got this more of a kind of an oval shapes so quite a thin ear
ear canal just trying to get a grip on this dry ear wax here here we go you can see that
that was lodged perfectly into the shape of the ear canal so that ear wax is gone so
we've actually cleared the offending ear wax from the ear canal so just doing a little
bit of tidying up now at the entrance
there we are just removing a couple of little bits of finer bits of debris
there it isn't always necessary to do this it's you know if it's not going to
cause the patient any discomfort if it's not too deep in here can I well normally
clear it away if it was a lot deeper in the ear canal and it wasn't really causing
any problems we would just leave it there I know lots of people ask you know
you're not doing a thorough job there needs your why'd you not remove all the
ear wax it's not necessary youre ear should have some ear wax in it and the whole point
of us doing this is to get this person hearing better you can see lovely
shiny eardrum there so by removing that first piece of ear wax this patient would
have heard a lot lot better taking some of the other ear wax away is uncomfortable
and you risk damaging the ear canal walls which can cause even further
problems so it's it's not always a great idea to remove everything so this is the
same patient now but the second ear and you can see that this ear wax looks a little
bit softer it looks a little bit more tacky and sticky so just using the
Jobson horn now to remove this for suction most practitioners of suction
prefer the ear wax to be slightly harder just because you can actually go in grab
a piece and remove it when it's this very soft and sticky kind of tacky nature
to ear wax it tends to take a little bit longer to remove and you don't tend to
get such a good grip so if patients have used things like if they've used a lot
of ear wax softening drops or they've used things like peroxide based products
things like otex or earex they use it here in the UK it tends to really
dissolve the ear wax turns it to a mush what you're gonna do then is as we are here
on this patient you're gonna be working a lot closer to the ear canal walls
because you're gonna have to take this off the ear canal walls to get get to get it
out which can be really uncomfortable for the patients so you have to remember
our patients are not sedated they're not anaesthetised so
they're fully awake and they feel every sensation in the ear in this kind of
procedure the worst sensation they tend to get is maybe a mild pinch or mild
scratching sensation obviously if you're a really rough and and you're really
kind of jabbing into the ear canal and that can be really painful and as you
know here we we try and always foremost of the mind is patient comfort so we
tend to tend to like the ear wax a little bit harder so you can see we're
working down about a third of the way into the ear canal now can see the ear wax is
getting sucked into the end of the zoellner tube but because it's so sticky as
you can see with this piece here it just stretches so rather than sort of pulling
a whole chunk out you just mould the ear wax and stretch it now sometimes you can go
in there with the Jobson horn and that will sometimes help you to get this out
from my personal experience with this type of tacky sticky ear wax it sometimes
always wet it just seems to cause more mess sometimes we're gonna go in with
the Jobson horn and as you can see with this patient they've got a piece is very
very deep so this is just in front of the ear drum so you wouldn't entertain
going in this deep with it with a Jobson just because to try and get behind that
ear wax which is the point of the jobson to get behind it bringing forwards you
would actually be touching the ear drum which is which is gonna be really
painful and a massive risk of perforation to the ear drum that
trying to unstick this now from the ear canal walls there we go it's just starts
moving so sticky that is how stuck it is to the ear canal walls you could use a
little bit of olive oil which will sometimes reduce the adhesion there we
go that's the piece we were trying to get to can see we've got another piece
which is just in front of the just in front of the eardrum there there you go
so I'm going to leave that sticky piece to touch the drum it's gonna be so
sticky that you would cause damage the eardrum so I'd rather let you know baths
and showers we'll wash that away I'd rather let some you know that that and
naturally come away on its own so this is our second patient so you can see
much harder ear wax I think you see the difference as soon as you get a grip on
this harder ear wax you start to take it away in in larger chunks so you can see
this is drier yeah a grip on it with the zoellner tube I think maneuvering this
out of the ear canal a little bit of dry skin but looks to be attached to the end
of this which is just holding it and stopping it from coming out so this is
the reason this person's ear wax is built up
you can see just how dark that ear wax it's all quite old ear wax there as well maybe I'll
got a good grip on it
you can see how much quicker that was to remove so much easier to come away
the ear drum looks nice and healthy this is the other ear you can see lots of bits of hair
on the outer part of the ear canal probably from either ear hair trims or
hair cuts but it looks nice and nice and solid on this side as well so this is
still the standard size zoellner tube were using here just lifting the base there
getting a better grip gives you how much quicker it is coming away a lot more
nicely okay we've got a a big dark hair in here so you can I just want to show
you how difficult it is to actually remover here using suction you can see
are you getting a grip on this here and it's flicking back and forth yeah I've
got here and that little bit of dry skin and there's the eardrum there and you
know this is what we removed from the second patient saw first piece of ear wax is
from the first ear second one from the second year in cm and inches thank you
very much for watching our video today if you did enjoy the video then please
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