OTITIS MEDIA: Try osteopathy before grommets
Acute otitis media is a painful and nasty disease of the middle ear in children, which doctors usually treat with courses of antibiotics.Unfortunately, this often offers only a short-lived reprieve, if any, and the child may sometimes have to undergo surgery to have grommets inserted if the problem keeps recurring.
This is traumatic for the child and parents, so both will be interested in a study that discovered osteopathy offers a long-term solution.
Children who had three or four episodes of otitis media in the previous year were either assigned to routine care (mainly antibiotics) or to routine care plus osteopathy.
Those in the osteopathy group needed less medical care and suffered fewer attacks than those just receiving standard treatment.
(Source: Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine, 2003; 157: 861-66).
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Glue Ear
Otitis Media with Effusion (the fluid or 'glue'), commonly known as glue ear is a build up of secretions in the middle ear, behind the eardrum. The increasing pressure causes great discomfort and distress to the child, and parents. If left to persist the ear may become infected, increasing the risk of deafness and worse.Most commonly occurring in infants, but it can drag on to even adult hood. The orthodox medical approach at present is to watch and wait for 6 months, as many do resolve without help. Prescribe antibiotics if infection sets in and consider the insertion of grommets. Grommets are tiny tubes that are inserted through the eardrum to provide a drainage hole. This however does involve perforating the eardrum, which inevitably leads to scarring and the possibility of a degree of deafness. A variety of other approaches may be tried, such as antihistamines, removal of the adenoids, etc., but none with any great success as, from an osteopathic point of view these approaches only try to deal with the symptoms and do not actually addresses the underlying cause. It is generally agreed that the cause is poor drainage from the middle ear. This is not helped by the angle of the eustation tube in the early years.
A further issue with this condition is the common, accompanying deafness, when the child is at such a critical stage of developing language skills.
The rest of my article on this & how cranial osteopathy could help -
Andrew.;)
RE: Glue Ear - Otitis Media with Effusion (OME)
Hiya
Harvey suffered with glue hear with effusion (and buckets of it) very badly when a baby....horrible stuff.....you cant even see into the ear just like PVA glue pooring well oozing like thick treacle from both ears...he was incrediably young to have it as he was only a few months old and they dont treat them that young, of course he was completely deaf in both ears and then only in the left ear for around 4 and a half months which is when all the other babies were starting to babble etc, we started using sign language but he was too young to use his own language effectively....he is 18months now and his hearing has been normal for about 5months, it turns out he was allergic to our cats but has outgrown this and is fine now...however whilst he understands as much as any other 18month old, he just refuses or has trouble communicating, he has ways of making us understand him but not talking yet and a lot of this I think is down to the glue ear, mind you saying that I didnt talk until i was three and i dont think einstein did until 4!
It really is a horrible condition....I know people also say the ear candling works but I never got that far...be interesting if anyone else has tried it...
T
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RE: Glue Ear - Otitis Media with Effusion (OME)
pulsatilla is the queen of remedies and usually very effective ifor this condition, especially if your child is clingy