clinical features
Last reviewed 01/2018
Acute otitis media is more common in children. Its symptoms and signs include:
- symptoms
- earache, usually throbbing and severe
- young children unable to express their earache might be noted to frequently rub their ear
- excessive crying (1)
- pyrexia up to 40 degrees - child may be flushed
- otorrhoea will often be blood-stained - profuse and mucoid at first, later becomes thick and yellow
- mucoid discharge: signifies tympanic membrane perforation, after which pain subsides
- signs
- conductive deafness is always present, and may be accompanied by tinnitus
- tympanic membrane signs depend on the stage of infection
- loss of lustre
- break-up of the light reflex
- redness
- impaired mobility of tympanic membrane (1)
- fullness of the ear drum - malleus handle becomes more vertical
- progression to a bulging ear drum - purple colour
- the final stage is perforation
- tenderness: possibly to pressure on the mastoid antrum
- diagnostic tests include;
(1)
- acoustic reflectometry
- pneumatic otoscopy (2)
- portable tympanometry
- professional tympanometry
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