6 Tuesday May 17 2022 | the timeshealth
First, a few fundamentals: there’s
nothing wrong with earwax per se. It
traps dirt and prevents infection and,
most of the time, our ears should self-
clean. The issue is when it becomes
impacted. Some are prone to problems,
for instance because they secrete a lot,
have small ear canals or indulge in
filthy habits such as using cotton buds
or sleeping with earplugs in. (For those
as addicted as I am, apparently the soft,
silicone ones that attach to the outer
part of the ear are the least bad.)
These days, the old method of using
a metal syringe to flush wax out is not
advised. Instead, alongside drops and
specialist manual removal, the
National Institute for Health and Care
Excellence (Nice) recommends either
electronic irrigation or microsuction.
The former, like syringing, flushes the
wax out with water, the latter uses a
small probe to suck it up.
Both come with potential side effects
including injury to the ear or, in the
case of microsuction, possible tinnitus
— although the risk is low. “It’s very
rare that somebody reports even a
temporary change in their hearing,”
says Simon Gane, a consultant surgeon
at the Royal National ENT Hospital
and co-founder of the Clear Ear Clinic,
where his colleagues have calculated
that they extract half a bathtub of
wax each year.
There is one catch, however. Despite
the fact that, annually, about two
million people in the UK experienceI had my ears
‘vacuumed’ —
it’s so satisfying
Millions of people each year experience
excess earwax — Alice-Azania Jarvis
tried microsuctioning to solve the issue
O
K, let’s get the
important bit
out the way. Yes,
getting your ears
professionally
vacuumed — sorry,
“microsuctioned”
— really is as
revoltingly satisfying as it sounds.
One minute you’re living in a waxy
fishbowl, cringing at the sound of your
own chewing and yelling at your
partner to just speak up for God’s sake,
then — shlrrrrp, shlrrrrp, glug, vroom
— the pressure releases and you’re
jumping at the ping of a microwave.
And yes, you do get to see the spoils
afterwards: in my case, a dark brown
ball, sized somewhere between a raisin
and a Malteser, offered up by the
nurse at the private clinic where I’d
just handed over £89 for the privilege.
The problem had begun with a
gentle sense of clagginess in my right
ear, then a growing claustrophobia,
culminating one morning in near-total
deafness on one side. My husband
accused me of ignoring him; at work,
background noise warped and swirled
until I had to focus intently on the
lips of anyone speaking to follow what
was going on. After a week of messily
applying olive oil drops as per the
NHS website, I decided that a more
muscular approach was required.
But what? And where? These, as it
turns out, are not uncontroversial
questions to answer.MP. Last month, Maria Caulfield,
minister for patient safety and
primary care, said she would ask
officials about inconsistencies in
treatment following concerns that
they could disproportionately affect
those suffering from cognitive decline
and dementia. Hearing loss also
“affects ability to communicate with
ease, reduces social interaction and
can lead to isolation, loneliness and
depression”, Munro notes. Meanwhile,
relying on hospital ENT departments
“causes a delay and is an expensive
and unnecessary use of specialist
resources”.
In my case, microsuction followed
a failed attempt at irrigation, during
which the doctor — not my GP, but
one near work that I knew offered it
— grew increasingly despondent as
the dam of wax held firm.
So it was that, last week, I found
myself lying on a treatment couch
as a nurse gently inserted a miniature
cone into my ear, followed by a thin
probe and... ooh. It’s hard to describe
the precise sensation of wax being
sucked out, except to say it brought
to mind those videos of pythons
eating small animals in which the
shape of the prey remains visible
as it slides down the snake’s body.
Afterwards I felt oddly jumpy,
startled by the clarity of bicycle bells
and building works.
The next morning, this was replaced
by a more uncomplicated sensation:
complete elation. No wonder Gane
finds his job so fulfilling: “Number
one, you’re a wizard with the sucker.
You wave this magic wand and
suddenly people get their hearing
back. And number two... there’s
something deeply satisfying about
getting rid of horrible gunk.”
Perhaps this explains why I’ve
rarely felt so popular as when word
got out at The Times that I’d had my
ears “done” and a procession of aurally
frustrated correspondents passed by
inquiring as to the details. My
husband, meanwhile, asked if I’d
filmed it (I hadn’t). “The number of
times that people’s partners want to
come in and are more interested in
what comes out than their partner —
it astounds me,” Gane says, laughing.
Having experienced this
particular visceral thrill first hand,
I’m less surprised.They’ve
calculated
that they
extract
half a
bathtub
of wax
annually
JOHN DAVIS FOR THE TIMESAlice-Azania Jarvisexcess wax, it’s actually pretty hard to
get it out — unless you’re willing to
pay. “Fewer and fewer GPs and health
centres are removing earwax,” says
Kevin Munro, Ewing professor of
audiology at the University of
Manchester. In 2020 the health
minister Edward Argar told parliament
that wax removal was no longer
among the core services that GP
surgeries are required to offer. He later
clarified that NHS treatment should
always be available via referral if
necessary; however, according to the
Royal National Institute for Deaf
People (RNID), many are nevertheless
being advised to seek private help. The
situation has probably not been helped
by the fact that some surgeries stopped
offering irrigation at the start of the
pandemic, instead recommending
“self-treatment” using an ear bulb
syringe, which cost about £5.
Among many specialists, this is the
source of frustration. RNID has begun
campaigning on the issue, submitting
a series of freedom of information
requests to clinical commissioning
groups responsible for local services
and urging members to write to their