Kissing the Ear Can Cause Permanent Hearing Loss

MSNBC reported 3/29/12 about a phenomenon called cochlear ear-kiss injury. This condition is when hearing loss occurs after a person kisses someone else over the ear, usually a mom over a baby's or child's ear.

Right after the kiss, a person can suffer from immediate and potentially permanent hearing loss along with other symptoms including ringing, sensitivity to sound, sound distortion, and aural fullness.

How or why does this occur?

With a kiss, a strong suction is created within the ear canal that pulls on the eardrum which tugs on the middle ear bones that can lead to turbulence within the inner ear.

Infants are particularly susceptible to this condition given their ear canals are SO small and the suction created by an adult kiss over the ear can be so strong.

There are other variations of this type of ear/hearing injury.

Barotrauma of the ear can lead to similar type issues due to sudden pressure changes from flying, parachute jumping, diving into water, SCUBA, snorkeling, etc.

Getting slapped over the ear can do the same thing as cochlear ear-kiss injury, but in reverse. Rather than suction from a kiss creating strong negative pressure within the ear canal, a slap over the ear creates sudden strong positive pressure.

At times, such pressure changes can get so severe that the eardrum can rupture.

Source:
Innocent 'kiss of deaf' can cause permanent hearing loss. MSNBC 3/29/12

The kiss of deaf: Four-year-old's big smooch left her mom with partial hearing loss. Newsday. June 7, 2008

Will.i.am Suffers From Tinnitus

And yet another celebrity reports suffering from bad tinnitus or ringing of the ears. Black Eyed Peas' Will.i.am spoke with Britain's the Sun stating that the only time it doesn't bother him is when there's loud music. Read the news report here.

Prevention is by far the best way to avoid suffering from this debilitating condition. How does one prevent this problem? Protect your ears from loud noises!!! Wear ear plugs if loud noise exposure is unavoidable.

Unfortunately for Will.i.am who is a hip-hop star with the Black Eyed Peas, his tinnitus is likely due to loud noise exposure from his music... an unfortunate job hazard of his profession.

If you are a musician and loud noise exposure is unavoidable, get Musician's Ear Plugs through our office which can help reduce noise exposure while maintaining music fidelity.

If you already have tinnitus, click here for more info on treatment options.

Read the news report here.

New Webpage on Tinnitus (Ringing in the Ears)

A new webpage has been added to our website regarding tinnitus otherwise known as ringing in the ears (or any other sound for that matter). There are 3 basic types of tinnitus for which evaluation and treatment differs and include:

1) Continuous
2) Pulsatile (Rhythmic)
3) Arrhythmic (the sound randomly occurs without any rhythm)

Depending on how a person describes their tinnitus (because the physician often can't hear it), the following may be ordered:

1) Audiogram
2) Carotid Ultrasound
3) MRI or CT Scan
4) Bloodwork (Specifically, TSH and CBC)

To read more about this symptom, click here.