Earache Information - Causes of Earache

Early in the morning, a well dressed man rushes into the emergency complaining of excruciating ear pain following a flight journey couple of hours back. At home, a child who had an attack of flu starts complaining of earache in the middle of the night and the apprehensive parents immediately takes her to their family physician. Another day, a gentleman, in his sixties presented to the out-patient department complaining of dull aching pain in the ear since past few days without any history of flu or trauma or any ear discharge. On examination, no signs of ear infection were found, later, after a thorough investigation he was diagnosed of having a benign tumor in the neck.

Pain, anywhere in the body is always unpleasant, and the worst of all is to have an earache. Thus, earache can be a result of various underlying causes, warranting a thorough investigation. This article tries to explain in brief 'what are the causes of earache'?

Human ear is divided into three parts namely external, middle and inner ear. The following discussion will be based on these divisions for the sake of easy understanding of the disease condition and its pathology.

Common causes of sudden onset of earache are impacted wax in the auditory canal, traumatizing the canal while attempting to remove the accumulated wax, swimmer's ear, acute otitis media (inflammation of the middle ear secondary to blockage of the ventilating tube connecting the nose to the ear) and barotrauma (trauma caused due to pressure variations in the ear, during flight journey or diving). As these conditions present with excruciating pain, the individuals usually present early to the out-patient or emergency department. With appropriate intervention, the pain can be relieved immediately or with-in couple of days.

Earache in the external ear can be due to fungal infection, keratosis (accumulation of dead cells and keratin) of the external auditory canal, malignant otitis externa (elderly diabetics whose sugar levels are poorly controlled and less commonly in immunocompromised individuals) myringitis (inflammation of the ear drum), perichondritis of the pinna (inflammation of the pinna cartilage) and cancer. Isolated herpes zoster infection of the external ear can cause severe earache associated with vesicular eruptions over the external ear. Middle ear causes include chronic suppurative otitis media (long-standing ear discharge), and its associated complications, Eustachian tube dysfunction and malignant tumors.

Many a times earache would be the sole complaint of the patient, but on examination there will be no signs of ear infection. If thoroughly investigated, the roots of the pain can be traced to the tumors in the neck compressing over the nerves supplying the ear.

Hope you enjoyed reading this article. A small attempt has been made in this article to enlighten about the causes of earache.