Question Diving with swimmer's ear

[beediving]

I always like to see how problems resolve in other threads, so I'll continue to post updates here when something new happens.

I'm feeling much better today and I went snorkeling. I cleaned the ear with mineral water afterwards and put my drops. Since yesterday afternoon, I've been using the Indonesian Otopain drops.

I'd say the problem is 80% resolved: touching and puling the ear lobe doesn't hurt. Pushing the trago down doesn't hurt, unless I push deep. I can sleep on the ear. The canal is still a bit swollen, but much less.

I didn't dive again to protect my ears.

Thank you again for all the replies and wise words given for educational purposes.

 

[Duke Dive Medicine]

I always like to see how problems resolve in other threads, so I'll continue to post updates here when something new happens.

I'm feeling much better today and I went snorkeling. I cleaned the ear with mineral water afterwards and put my drops. Since yesterday afternoon, I've been using the Indonesian Otopain drops.

I'd say the problem is 80% resolved: touching and puling the ear lobe doesn't hurt. Pushing the trago down doesn't hurt, unless I push deep. I can sleep on the ear. The canal is still a bit swollen, but much less.

I didn't dive again to protect my ears.

Thank you again for all the replies and wise words given for educational purposes.

Great to hear that you're feeling better, I hope you continue to recover.

I imagine that you're not alone in carrying antibiotics on a trip as a precaution. One thing to keep in mind is that the kill spectrum in antibiotics differs between medications, that is, the amoxicillin that you brought with you probably would not work for the most likely organism(s) that caused your otitis externa. For future trips in remote areas with limited medical care and evacuation capabilities, if your physician is amenable to it, you may want to consider more detailed contingency planning with him/her, that is, mapping out the most likely organisms that could cause severe infections in different environments in that area of the world and carrying multiple antibiotics to cover them should the infection become bad enough to require systemic antibiotics, with clear criteria for what to take and when.

Best regards,
DDM

 

[dmaziuk]

I imagine that you're not alone in carrying antibiotics on a trip as a precaution.

Our doctor knows we both swim and dive so we have a standing prescription for the Neomycin/Polymixin/Hydrocortizone mix, and we take it on dive trips always. Together with ear syringe since pharmacies at popular dive spots don't seem to carry those for some reason.

As a side note I would avoid **cain-containing drops while diving because it could mask pain from barotrauma -- unless you can tell barotrauma from swimmers ear by the feel of it.