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A woman's daily habit of cleaning her ears with cotton swabs led to a life-threatening infection in her skull, according to news reports. The 37-year-old woman, who is identified only as Jasmine, said she cleaned her ears every night with cotton swabs... But over time, she noticed she had trouble hearing out of her left ear, and finally went to the doctor. She was initially told she had an ear infection, and was given antibiotics. But her hearing problems remained, and she soon noticed blood appearing on the cotton swabs after she cleaned her ears. After a hearing test showed...

Need some advice for peace of mind of the wife and I. We have a beautiful baby boy, almost 4 mos. old (next week) that had a high fever last weekend before Christmas. Monday we took him in and Dr. said that his cold/upper respiratory infection has given him a secondary inner ear infection ( acute otitis media (AOM). The good Dr. gave us Cifdinir (Omnicef) 3/4 TSP for 10 days and thankfully his fever has gone. However, this Christmas has been a nightmare for Mom and I due to his frequent waking and screaming. His schedule over Christmas was...

WASHINGTON, June 20--Children with recurrent otitis media have a higher number of infectious pathogens in their nasopharynx and lower counts of beneficial flora. A Georgetown team, discovered this while seeking to show how smoking by parents affected children with otitis media. Surprisingly, the number of infectious pathogens found in the children of smoking parents and the children of non-smoking was essentially the same, Itzhak Brook, M.D., and Alan E. Gober, M.D., reported in the June issue of Archives of Otolaryngology. They collected swabs from 40 children with recurrent otitis media and also from their parents, half of whom smoked at...