Don’t Let Swimmer’s Ear Ruin Your Summer Vacation

One of the worst things to do is use a cotton swab or other object to try to dry out or clean your ear.

“If you irritate the protective skin barrier of the ear by rubbing it with even something as soft as a Q-tip, you can create micro scratches,” Cosetti says. “Bacteria love that.”

When should you see the doctor?

If water remains trapped in your ear for a couple of days, it’s time to see a health professional, Cosetti says. Symptoms of swimmer’s ear can include pain, swollen glands in the neck, redness or swelling of the ear, difficulty hearing, liquid draining from the ear and fever.

People should take lingering pain seriously. In rare cases, swimmer’s ear can cause cellulitis, a deep tissue infection.

“Don’t wait five or six days to go to the doctor, because then you are more likely to need oral medications” like antibiotics, says Mehul Patel, pediatric medical director for Memorial Hermann Medical Group in Houston.

How is swimmer’s ear treated?

Doctors often prescribe antibiotics or antifungal ear drops to treat the infection, often combined with a steroid to reduce painful inflammation, Powell says. If pain persists, doctors may prescribe antibiotic pills. Over-the-counter pain relievers such as acetaminophen (Tylenol) and ibuprofen (Advil) can help.

If you have an infection, you shouldn’t swim or risk getting more water in your ears while taking medicated ear drops. You can gently put a cotton ball coated in petroleum jelly in the affected ear during a shower or bath. People should also avoid wearing earplugs, earbuds or hearing aids until pain and discharge stop.

If ear pain continues, an ENT may need to use a tool called an ear curette or a suction device to remove dried pus, earwax, flakes of skin, dead bacteria or other debris, Jackson says.

In my case, the pain accompanied me home from the beach, prompting me to visit my primary care provider. She advised me to see an ENT if prescription ear drops didn’t help. I feel lucky to have landed an appointment with a physician’s assistant at a local ENT practice who gave my ears the vacuum treatment. While having someone hoover my ear canal was painful at times, the procedure helped a lot. I no longer felt like there was debris knocking around my ear canal.

In some cases of swimmer’s ear, the ear canal can swell shut. In that case, an ENT may need to thread a wick into the ear to allow medication to get to the farther part of the ear canal, Jackson says.

“The ear canal is a cylinder; it can’t swell out, so it has to swell in,” Jackson says. “The ear canal can get so swollen that it’s closed off.”

Are older adults at greater risk of swimmer’s ear?

People with chronic skin conditions, such as eczema and psoriasis, are at greater risk of swimmer’s ear, Jackson says.

So are older adults, those with diabetes and people who are immunocompromised. For older people with diabetes, an untreated swimmer’s ear infection can be severe, requiring hospitalization and treatment with intravenous antibiotics. In rare cases, infection can spread to adjacent bone or other important structures, such as the nerve responsible for facial movements, says Powell, leading to a condition called skull base osteomyelitis, which can require surgery.

While hearing aids have many benefits — such as improving communication, reducing the risk of falls and even lowering the risk of dementia — they can irritate the ear and increase the risk of infection, especially if people wear them for a long time and don’t clean them properly, Powell says.

She adds, “Unless the aids are specially designed for use in wet environments, it is a good practice for people to wait until their ears are thoroughly dry before putting their hearing aids back in.”