A doctor in Hualien reminded parents whose children have trouble hearing to take them to an otolaryngologist before attempting to clean the child’s ears themselves.
Mennonite Christian Hospital pediatrician Cheng Yung-lung (鄭永隆) said that he treated a three-year-old boy who did not respond when his mother was speaking to him.
The mother brought him to the hospital after trying unsuccessfully to clean the boy’s ears on her own, he said, adding that he treated the boy, removing a 2cm-long clump of ear wax from one ear and a 1cm-long clump from the other.
With one slip, a parent could damage their child’s ear cavities, which are very delicate at such a young age, Cheng said.
He said he tried three times before successfully removing the wax, after which the boy could hear clearly and responded to his mother.
Wax buildup can easily affect a child’s hearing, but parents are advised not to try removing the wax on their own, as children’s ear canals are easily scratched and could bleed, Cheng said.
COTTON SWABS
Cotton swabs should never be inserted to any depth in the ear canal, he said, adding that if the ear drum is punctured, it would result in permanent hearing damage.
As children are driven by curiosity, they might be drawn to put other things in their ears, which would require medical attention, he said.
BATTERIES
He has removed air gun projectiles from the ears of one child and mercury batteries from the nose of another, he said.
The batteries were particularly dangerous, as mercury is poisonous and would cause harm if it leaked from the battery into the bloodstream, he said.
Doctors have a number of methods for removing foreign objects from the ears or nose, including the use of pincers to grab the object, medication to break down ear wax, cleaning solutions to dislodge obstructions, and drops to lubricate the canal and allow obstructions to be easily pulled out, Cheng said.
HAIR CLIPS
He has encountered parents who use hair clips to scoop wax out of their children’s ears, Cheng added.
However, doing so could cause an ear infection, he said, adding that cotton swabs can also be problematic, as they can push wax further into the ear.
Only a doctor can safely remove wax and other obstructions from ears, he said.
However, it is usually unnecessary to see a doctor, as ear wax naturally falls out of the ears on its own, he said.
Ear wax is also helpful to the body, as it can keep insects and other foreign objects out of the ear canal, he said.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching