Surprisingly, around 20% of all ear infections happen to adults. Most individuals think of ear infections as a childhood illness, something that affects primarily young kids. Ear infections are certainly more prevalent in kids but adults do get them too.
For adults with hearing impairments or hearing loss, ear infections can be especially inconvenient, as they can interact with hearing aids in some unpleasant ways. Also, when hearing aids aren’t correctly maintained, they can become a vector for ear infection-causing diseases.
So is it a bad idea to use hearing aids with an ear infection? In general, the answer is yes, but you might not want to. Hearing aids could aggravate the discomfort and inflammation caused by an ear infection. However, there are some steps that those who use hearing aids can take to help avoid and manage ear infection symptoms.
Can an ear infection be caused by hearing aids?
If you’re an adult with hearing loss and you start to notice the symptoms of an ear infection, you might begin to wonder: did my hearing aids cause this ear infection? The technical answer is no. But in order to get the complete picture we have to look at it in greater detail.
The vast majority of all ear infections are due to viruses or bacteria that then infect the inner ear. There are a number of paths that bacteria and viruses can take on their way to becoming an infection. Sometimes, an earlier illness, like a cold or sinus infection, will lead to an infection of the inner ear. In other situations, fluid accumulation may lead to an infection. It’s also completely feasible that a virus or bacteria directly infected the inner ear by physical transmission.
For people who wear hearing aids, this can be a frequent occurrence. The virus or bacteria latches onto your hearing aid and, upon insertion, gets access to the inner ear. Proper hearing aid cleaning and maintenance is crucial for this reason. So the virus or bacteria is really the cause of the infection, not the hearing aid itself. But your device may play a role in transmission.
How ear infections interact with hearing aids
So what is the degree of interaction between hearing aids and ear infections? To understand what to expect, it’s helpful to look at the most common symptoms of an ear infection. In general, ear infections will present with the following symptoms:
- Dizziness or vertigo
- A feeling of fullness or pressure in the ears
- Inflammation and swelling
- In some situations, temporary hearing loss
- Ringing in the ears (tinnitus)
- Fluid draining from the ear
- Ear pain
Not everyone will suffer from every symptom, of course. Usually, you will have obvious swelling of the inner ear and ear pain in the infected ear. These symptoms can have an adverse interaction with hearing aids for individuals with hearing loss. That’s because the hearing aid goes inside the infected ear (at least some of it). Your hearing aids may cause added soreness as they irritate the tender inflamed infected ear.
Additionally, any in-the-canal hearing aid can stop drainage. When fluids can’t drain, your discomfort may become prolonged. This will also increase the pressure (and pain) you feel in your ears. When you are wearing your hearing aid, pressure can be even more uncomfortable.
This added moisture can also impair the operation of your hearing aid. So your hearing aids aren’t functioning at peak performance and your ears are in pain. This means that you will have a terrible time wearing your hearing aid while you have an ear infection.
Ear infection & hearing aid solutions
You may now be thinking: my hearing aids bother me when I have an ear infection… but what can I do? There are several steps you can take to reduce your risk of developing ear infections and to address the discomfort that an ear infection might cause. Here are a few of those steps:
- Practice good ear hygiene: It’s important to keep your ears clean and dry and routinely clean your outer ear. However, you should never stick any object inside of your ear and that includes cotton swabs. With a cotton swabs, your risk of developing an ear infection increases because you could push earwax and debris further up into your ear canal. You’re trying to accomplish the exact opposite.
- Regularly clean your hearing aids: Making sure your devices are clean can help to ensure they aren’t transmitting bacteria and viruses to your ears (or, at least, that it happens less frequently.) Ask us for assistance if you’re not certain how to properly clean and disinfect your hearing aids.
- Talk to your hearing specialist: If your ears start to feel better, but the discomfort from your hearing aids doesn’t recede, think about talking to us to see if you can get a better fit on your devices.
- Talk to your healthcare provider: If you think that you have an ear infection, talk to your doctor as soon as possible. The sooner you address the ear infection, the less severe or prolonged your symptoms will be.
- Take breaks from wearing your hearing aids: If the pain is prolonged or significant, it’s okay to take a break from wearing your hearing aid until your ears are feeling better. During this time off, you can pursue other means of communicating with your loved ones (like texting or writing messages on a piece of paper, and so on).
You most likely depend heavily on your hearing aid every day. They help you get around your world more easily and have better communication with your friends and family. Which means that these little devices can often be hard to give up, even for a short time. However, taking a break from your hearing aids while you have an ear infection can help you recover from your sickness more quickly and more comfortably. This will help you get back to feeling better sooner.
It’s not uncommon for individuals to get ear infections. But you should still get treatment if you notice symptoms. If you have questions about how ear infections might affect your hearing aid use, give us a call today.