What cha say?

boardrider · Since 05 Apr 2006 1034 Posts Ventura, CA XTreme Poster

From Surfline.com - for all you hard core types

What is 'surfer's ear'? How can it be avoided and/or treated?
asked by Vic Haddad, NorCal

Otolaryngologist Doug Hetzler (MD, FACS) from Santa Cruz, responds:

"Surfer's ear" is a condition where new layers of bone are produced in the ear canal as a reaction to exposure to cold water in the ear canal. The skin of the inner ear canal is the thinnest skin in the body (think tissue-paper thick) and is a very poor insulator. The cold water stimulates a layer under the skin known as periosteum to create new bone layers under the skin.

Over time (typically at least 10 years of serious water time -- one study estimated it took about 3000 hours of cumulative surfing in cold water to cause significant bone growth) the increasing volume of the bone layers may create enough narrowing of the ear canal to start causing problems -- kind of like the waist of an hourglass. This may then cause water to get trapped deep in the ear canal, or earwax or sloughing skin may plug up the narrow waist. Once any of these materials plug up the ear canal, you can start having infections occur deep in the ear canal due to the trapped bacteria and the moist environment and of course experience some reversible hearing loss due to the ear canal being plugged.

The problem is proportionately greater as water gets colder and has become an increasing problem since the invention of the wetsuit, which now allows people to stay in water that formerly would have been tolerated only for very short periods of time.

To prevent surfer's ear you need to minimize the amount of cold water that gets into your ear canal and also minimize the evaporative cooling that occurs when you are sitting on your board with the wind blowing past your wet ear canals. The traditional answer has been to find earplugs that you are comfortable wearing and that will stay in for the duration of a surf session -- most surf shops are knowledgeable about these options. Wearing a neoprene hood can also somewhat serve the same function and wearing earplugs and a neoprene hood is about the best you can do to try to totally prevent the development of surfer's ear.

Treatments for the adverse effects of surfer's ear involve cleaning out obstructing wax/sloughing skin (I am an ear surgeon and my bias is to do this with a microscope with 5X magnification and micro-suctions and micro-tools) and using antibiotic eardrops when ear canal skin infections occur. Various over-the-counter self-treatment products are sold in drugstores, and these may work if the ear canal is not too narrow. If the ear canal is really narrow, putting the various softening agents in your ear canal may only make a soupy mess.

When the symptoms of the obstructing ear canal become intolerable it may be appropriate to consider surgical removal of the ear canal bone growths (medically known as "exostoses"). A variety of operations have been done through the years to remove the exostoses, and the technique that I and a few others are using now is to remove the exostoses via the ear canal with a 1 mm chisel which avoids the need for an incision behind the ear; eliminates the risk of noise exposure that occurs with drilling; aids in preserving maximal ear canal skin and therefore optimizing healing.

MMM - maybe thats why I can never hear my girlfriend when she's talking to me. Laughing

Kataku2k3 · Since 14 Aug 2005 3753 Posts Los Angeles, CA Videographer

That's interesting, I'd never heard of that before... Hopefully us kiters are a little better off as we're not in the water quite so much!

importracer9 99 · Since 27 Oct 2005 296 Posts Obsessed

for sure

shastadogs2 · Since 28 Mar 2005 336 Posts Obsessed

honey, what's that you say, i can't hear you. . .

oh well, guess i'll go kiting.