How to Properly Treat Ear Infections

Dr. Jerry Williams of Urgent Care 24/7 discusses why his Grandma's ear infection remedy might not be the best idea.
How you treat an ear infection and what you should do right now, if you're watching this video, and you're going, Oh my gosh, I'm not sure what I should do my two year old I think has an ear infection, or my husband has an ear infection, what should we do? So first and foremost, let me just encourage you, the first thing you need to do is you need to make arrangements to go get seen by a medical professional immediately, especially in kids, because hearing is so important to the development of normal language. Chronic ear infections over time that aren't recognized or aren't treated appropriately, can cause chronic hearing loss, which can lead to verbal, developmental delay in kids. So really important that you treat potential ear infections, especially in children, but people of all ages that you treat them as seriously because they are.
The beauty of ear infections are more much more times the knot that very easily treatable with appropriate antibiotics and appropriate medical care. So if, let's say your two year old is tugging on their ear and was fussy, and they wouldn't take a bottle and has a fever. So first thing Dr. Williams would do, is go grab my otoscope and take a peek in the ear. Now we have another ear infection and the ears would be red, his tympanic membrane or his eardrum is red and bulging, if this is the case we would prescribe antibiotics. It's really important that that diagnosis be made appropriately.
Having a medical provider looking in the ear, and then getting on an appropriate antibiotic for an ear infection. And again, you don't want to play around with ear infections and say, well, it could be viral, we'll see if the ear infection goes away. It's not the way you treat it because ear infections over time, especially chronic untreated ear infections can lead as Dr. Williams mentioned earlier to chronic hearing loss. So it is really important if you have an ear infection, make sure you make arrangements to see a medical professional as quickly as possible, where they can take a look in your ear and get you on the right antibiotic. But also make sure you take your antibiotic, exactly as your medical provider prescribed it, make sure you've finished that antibiotic. Dr. Williams don't care how much better your ear feels. Yes, you need to finish taking all of the medicine and then it's really important that you follow up with your medical provider and make sure they examine your ear after treatment to make sure that the medication the antibiotic they put you on was effective and their ear ear has returned back to normal visually, but also on examination.