Spider Found Living in Woman's Ear for 5 Days

Thanks to @beubank for alerting me to this story about a spider who lived in a woman's ear for 5 days before being removed. As an aside, in typical media blunder of factual error, in the Huffington Post, a picture is shown of the spider stating an "x-ray photo"... COME ON!!! The picture is NOT an x-ray in any way shape and form!!! It's just a regular ordinary picture one takes with a camera.

On that note, August 9, 2012 must be the time for all media to report on all sorts of things found in people's ears and noses.

Fox News reported on a story about a lego being stuck inside a kid's nose for 3 years.

In the past year, I must have removed several cockroaches, ticks, rocks, pebbles, play-doe, paper, cotton, and even one moth. Never a spider however.

In perhaps one of the most impressive arrays of foreign objects removed from the ear, nose and throat (I believe in the thousands) is on display at the Mutter Museum in Philadelphia. All objects were removed by a single ENT (Dr. Chevalier Jackson). If you are ever in Philadelphia, this museum is a must see.

Chronic Cough Could be Due to Lung Cancer

BBC News recently reported that chronic cough may be due to lung cancer.

Here are my two cents on this condition in support of this assertion.

I often seen patients for chronic cough... not the kind that has been going on for only a few weeks, but the kind of cough that has gone on for over 1 or more years. Even 10-20 years.

It is not unusual for such patients to have seen an ENT, GI, pulmonary, and allergy specialists to try and stop their cough.

In particular, such patients may be informed their cough is not due to the lungs after getting a chest x-ray and pulmonary function tests which all come back normal along with lack of response to inhaler medications.

Unfortunately, some patients' chronic cough is due to lung cancer which is only discovered on additional studies including bronchoscopy and CT scan of the chest. Obtaining only a chest X-ray and breathing tests are not sufficient enough.

Now, it certainly is not necessary to perform these additional specialized studies in every patient who has been coughing for a few weeks... but when somebody has been coughing for over 1 year, a more intensive search for abnormalities is required.

In my clinic, it is not uncommon that a patient who has been coughing for over 1+ years ends up being found to have lung cancer.

Of course, there are other causes of chronic cough including reflux, allergies, post-nasal drip, medication side effect, etc that also needs to be looked into.

For more info on chronic cough.

Source:
Persistent cough 'could be lung cancer warning' BBC News 5/6/12

New Article on the Mystery Chronic Cough

New section on Chronic Cough has been added. This webpage is NOT about the usual chronic cough due to asthma, laryngitis, cold, reflux, sinusitis, allergy, etc. Rather it is about the chronic cough for which no obvious reason exists. It is the mystery chronic cough. For some patients, this unusual type of chronic cough may be secondary to something called Laryngeal Sensory Neuropathy (also known as neuropathic cough or vagal neuropathy).

Click here to read more about it.

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Medications that may help a chronic cough due to reflux: