DS1 aged 6 - will they syringe his ear or is he too young?

[scrambledhead]

DS1 is under an NHS audiologist as he has a "congested" left ear. He only just failed his last hearing test in Nov so we don't have to go back till May - and to be honest I wasn't too worried as his hearing was pretty good, it was just at whispering level that he had a slight problem.

Then in Feb he got an ear infection, had antibiotics and got better pretty quickly. But since then his hearing has got worse. Went back to dr last week and his ear is full of wax and dr told us to put 4-5 drops of olive oil in every day. We've been doing that for a week now and there has been no change - no sign of any wax coming out and certainly no impovement in hearing. DS's teacher actually thinks his hearing is worse than ever.

If I take him back to dr do you think they'll syringe his ears? One of the mums in the playground says he's too young. But he's struggling to hear and I just want to make him all better. Poor boy.

Thanks for your help.

I doubt that his ear will be syringed. I'd go back and ask for something to break the wax up rather than just putting olive oil into it.

Gentle ear syringing can be done at this age but in your ds' case i would try to avoid syringing because of his history of ear problems. Syringing can introduce infection and can on occasions lead to perforation of ear drum. It would probably be worth trying a different drop such as sodium bicarbonate drops next. It would be worth getting his ears checked again to see if it is wax that is still a problem.

If it needs doing they can use suction at the hospital, DS has his done every 3 months.

I used both olive oil and bicarb solution - with no avail with ds1.
So they syringed him at 4yrs.
He was absolutely fine and said didn't hurt at all.
Best to ask dr again, just in case there's an underlying problem, that may cause permanent damage.

Thanks everyone. Took him back to dr and they did syringe it, very slowly with water. Fingers crossed !