Red aching ears Doctors puzzling

Red aching ears: Doctors are a mystery

08/03/2015

Some patients even present experts with big puzzles. One of them is a young woman in England, who turns to a special clinic with attacks of redness and pain in her right ear. The doctors there but can not find the cause. Finally, the diary helps the patient.

Violent pain from the ear to the TMJ
Reported about a truly enigmatic patient „Mirror online“ In a recent post: A young woman turns with unusual complaints to the Royal National Throat, Nose and Ear Hospital, an ear, nose and throat hospital in London. The 22-year-old's ear keeps blushing, causing a severe pain from the ear to the temple and temporomandibular joint. The symptoms last an hour and are associated with a hearing loss and a painful sensitivity to noise. The patient also suffers from increased fatigue and often has a headache. For three months, the young woman has already had problems, but neither the family doctor nor specialists could find the cause.

Doctors do not find anything unusual in examinations
The patient already had complaints in the right ear five years ago. For half a year, she had a right-sided tinnitus and was already perceiving noises as annoying and painful when others found the background noise completely normal. As a result, various measures such as hearing rehabilitation, stress management for stress reduction, distraction, new communication tactics and relaxation techniques had helped her and the ear pain and other complaints had disappeared. Like the doctors now in the trade magazine „Journal of Medical Case Reports“ Report, they could discover anything unusual in the physical examination. There is no lymph node swelling or signs of infection. Also checks of the sense of balance, the function of the middle ear and hearing test are inconspicuous. The blood levels are normal, magnetic resonance images of the head show no evidence of diseases and other diseases of the skin, neck or teeth could be excluded by the doctors.

Physicians speculate about causes
The diagnosis of the doctors is finally: „Red-Ear Syndrome“ (RES), in German: Rote-Ohren-Syndrom. It is a very rare syndrome that was originally described in Jar 1994. Because of lack of knowledge, doctors speculate about causes and treatment options. Some suspect a connection with allergies. Others assume a disorder in the area of ​​the cervical nerve roots or suspect lesions in certain cranial nerves or the autonomic nervous system (sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous system). In the approximately 100 RES cases found by the authors of the case report, many of the patients reported that the onset of redness and pain was mostly seizure-like. Like the patient, part of them suffered from migraine at the same time. In several people, the redness was caused by heat, touch, head movement, sneezing, coughing, chewing or hairbrushes and in many played stress an important role.

Case reports provide the impetus for finding therapy
Even with the therapeutic approaches, there are no clear guidelines. It is reported that some people helped cooling pillow and other painkillers or other medicines such as migraine drugs, antihypertensives or antidepressants. Although the individual case reports can not be applied directly to other patients, they can sometimes provide an important impetus for finding a therapy. The patient in London assured the doctors that she did not have a threatening illness. With that, they took her an important part of the worries.

Oral stress may cause discomfort
In addition, she was advised to behavioral changes that she should try out. So she should limit her caffeine intake, drink regularly and sufficiently, reduce stress and move more. In addition, to identify certain triggers that cause discomfort, the patient should keep a journal of her pain. And the latter is obviously very helpful, because the documentation shows that her complaints occur especially when she drinks orange juice. The seizures occur less frequently if they do without the juice. However, it is not proven that the orange juice is actually the cause. The young woman has tried different approaches and four months later, the pain is gone and the ear reddened much less. The patient can live well with it. (Ad)