It seems like, anecdotaly, a large percentage of children have chronic ear infections, requiring extensive antibiotic use and often tubes surgically inserted in the ears. I find this kind of odd. Are ear infections this common outside of America? What happens if a kid in a country without modern medical care has this problem, and can’t get treatment? Can the infection spread, can it cause deafness? Will it eventually resolve itself, after much torture for both the kid and the parents? Did kids 100 years ago also frequently have chronic ear infections?
Anecdotically, from talking to parents of my acquaintance here in Germany, it seems to be common here as well. I am curious about the geographical/historical aspect too.
Otitis media is very common. Most cases are viral and most will resolve spontaneously. Most parents don’t understand this and demand antibiotics regardless of epidemiology. The infection can spread, and can cause deafness, but that is rare and a doctor would begin treatment before it got that bad. Chronic recurrent ear infections are a contributor to hearing loss. No clue about 100 years ago.
So, are ear infections contagious?
I don’t believe the “ear infection” itself is, but in my daughter at least it was usually a secondary infection resulting from an upper respiratory infection. The upper respiratory infections are of course contagious and get passed around daycare centers with wild abandon. I suspect more two income households would contribute to a higher incidence of ear infections.
I would suspect not. Very few kids 100 years ago where in daycare slobbering on toys that the next kid would pick up and stick in his mouth. The two household income with kids in daycare is the root cause of the increase in the spread of germs that lead to ear infections.
Spreading germs won’t directly cause ear infections because they’re not contagious. But getting sick can irritate the eustachian tubes and trigger an infection, and kids do catch more illnesses in daycare than at home.
The root of the problem is that a kid’s eustachian tubes are not as developed as an adults and are at a different angle. Well functioning eustachian tubes clear water, bacteria and viruses from the ear, but any number of factors can cause them to swell and become blocked and cause an infection in the fluid.
Smoking (the parents, not the kids), pacifier use, drinking from a bottle while laying on their back, pollution, allergies and even obesity are some things known to cause ear infections in children.
I don’t know about ear infections in history, but King Francis II of France died from one, as did Oscar Wilde (maybe).
What Fubaya said is what our pediatrician told us years ago. Basically the child gets a cold or some other upper respiratory ailment. The mucous becomes infected. The connection to the ear is very short and rather straight, so the mucous and the accompanying bacteria and/or viruses spread readily to the middle ear. This is assisted by the child’s sniffling, not blowing his/her nose effectively, and so on.
When my kids were of the age for it, no one in the house ever smoked, they (the children) did not take a bottle to bed, but we did have at least one cat and/or dog. One of the two does have allergy problems even now, 30 years later. We were fortunate that amoxicillin almost always worked and the earache was gone in a day. And yes, we always finished the prescription!
The incidences were quite frequent for the first few years and diminished to nothing years later.
I agree with the implied sentiment above that daycare is a lousy substitute for real parenting.
But … I wonder just how much worse daycare really is for spreading illness versus the school & pre-school we’ve had for a couple centuries now and versus the multi-generational group village living which was common for hundreds of years before the rise of the so-called “nuclear family” in the +/- 1950s.
Yes.
As noted, the eustachian tubes in children do not drain the middle ear as well as in adults.
The kid has an ear ache until it resolves on its own. Depending on the kid and the severity, this might mean no one in the household sleeps until it resolves on its own.
Earaches don’t really spread to others, but the triggering infections (colds, viruses, bacteria, etc.) certainly can. Untreated, if enough pus/pressure builds up it can potentially rupture the ear drum, after which all the nastiness will drain out of the ear. Sometimes the ear drum will heal up from that and still be useful for hearing. Sometimes it can really mess up the ear drum and hearing. If infection damages other structures in the middle ear it can cause deafness.
In rare instances, if the infection ate away the bone of the skull and infected the brain, or sepsis occurred, it could cause death but I expect that was all pretty rare.
Yes.
Yes, but compared to some disease that were more common back then, like measles, polio, typhoid, cholera, smallpox, dysentery, and Og knows what else a bad ear ache wasn’t seen as nearly as important as one of the bigger killers
Sometimes it seems to run in families, I had recurring ear infections as did my brother. My dad had some operation when he was 6 or 7 that did something to the mastoid area on both sides, we used to have a picture of him with bandages behind the ears sort of earmuff style.
this is about where the bandages would have covered, no idea what the operation actually was
spoiler for picture of a surgical site, some people are squeamish. He had recurring ear infections when young as well.
Moderator note—
LSLGuy–Your first sentence above could have been worded better. I’m sure you really didn’t mean that daycare is a lousy substitute for “real” parenting. If you did, it didn’t need to be injected into this GQ thread.
No big thing, not a warning, just a side note.
samclem Moderator
I breast fed my kid for 6 months and he only had one ear infection his entire life.
I breastfed mine for 15 and he has had myriad infections and two sets of tubes.
From what my pediatrician told me, the most common underlying cause is simply anatomy. Some kids get 'em with every case of the sniffles, some don’t.
Also breastfed for several months in which time my daughter had recurring ear infections, one burst eardrum, and lots of sleepless nights until we decided that paying for daycare while missing a lot of work wasn’t worth it. Once they started talking tubes, I quit my job to stay home with her.
Putting babies in “kiddie kennels” surely doesn’t help. Antibodies aren’t all up and working.