Significant Ear Wax Blockage Removed | Hair-Bound Build-Up in One Ear Canal - EP1256

Added: 2026-05-05

[00:00:00]Hi everybody, coming up in this video we've got a massive earwax plug in this ear canal.

[00:00:06]My name is Taylor Green, I'm one of the audiologists here at Audiology Associates.

[00:00:10]My name is Rhys Barber, I'm the other audiologist here at Audiology Associates as well.

[00:00:13]So it's just the one patient.

[00:00:14]Just you? Yeah, just the one patient in this one. So it's quite a bit. Sit back and enjoy your tea. Yeah, enjoy your tea.

[00:00:20]It's actually quite a tricky one, as you can see by the length of the video.

[00:00:24]Yeah.

[00:00:25]It's quite a lengthy one to do, so just make yourself a cup of tea if you want to, a cup of coffee, or whatever you fancy drinking.

[00:00:34]But we've got the standard size Zolna 2 here. Now, the vision is not ideal on this one, and I think I remember saying to Rhys, if you don't want to use this one, I completely understand, because there's just so much hair in this one.

[00:00:48]It was quite a tricky one to do, and I always hate these really hairy ones.

[00:00:54]What you basically get is where all this hair kind of mats and twists up against each other like this.

[00:01:03]It kind of glues together within the wax, but what it also does, when you try and get a grip with the suction, is it almost acts like a mesh, and it sounds like you've got a suction grip, but it's not a full grip, and yes, really, really tricky to do.

[00:01:23]It almost goes, if you put like rebar in concrete, it just strengthens the concrete. It's like that for the wax. just you get this such a sticky sticky wax and the wax is really doing its job really well it's the wax the whole purpose of wax in your ear canal protect the ear right at all costs protect the ear so it's going to be protecting it from infection it's slightly acidic so it stops bacteria taking hold but it also picks up any dirt and debris that enter the ear canal including here chunky bits of hair and the hairs on the outer part of your canal are also designed to stop any dirt and debris from going in so when you're trimming those hairs what's happening is you're trimming those down those fall into the canal the wax thinks it's debris and picks it up and tries to carry it out but it can't because it's then stuck yeah so this is what happens uh yeah we've already got quite a quite a big piece yeah we've got quite a big piece out there was a little gap just above the wax there um and it's getting a little bit dark i know you can see the color difference this has been in there a little while this one uh so yeah we've got i'm trying to hold that grip you can see me moving kind of up and down in the ear canal and all i'm doing there is trying to detach this off the ear canal yeah because if it's been in there a long time you usually get like a layer of skin uh around the ear canal which basically just holds it in place it's like a it's like velcro yeah yeah that's true you're gonna try and stick it first before you can get it out so it's uh yeah it's uh they're not easy ones to do but the what you get as well sorry is where the hairs are all embedded in the wax and as taylor said they criss-cross over one another so if you imagine if you're using something like a suction uh that you've got everyone's got hoovers at home if you try and pick something up off the floor like a piece of card off the floor if it covers the suction tube you'll be able to pick it up really easily if you're trying to pick something up this that the air can pass through you can't pick it up so easily and that's what happens with the suction is the hair sitting on top almost a barrier like a mesh and then the hair can the god the air can pass through the hair uh on there uh which makes it much harder to pull out so there you go so that's what happened that's what we should do i just thought of something i can't do it i can't i'm tongue-tied so i can't even do it i can't i tongue twist it would be difficult for me i think we'll have to read a lot of the tongue twisters we should we should do something like that we haven't done anything like that for ages though so it's it's getting there it's getting there slowly we're starting to get you know all this kind of peeling away it's breaking apart in little sections at the moment which is fine you know a little bit is better than nothing ah it's just that i don't really want to be using oil because i don't want it to i don't want it to interfere with my vision you've got a teeny tiny gap at the top there i wonder whether you'll switch it depends on this next section if it gets stuck i reckon there's gonna be a reiki wreck coming in there potentially potentially oh it's moving now you don't need it you got it i did i see like this is obviously one that i did afterwards i thought in fairness i edited two years this morning i had beautiful wax shots oh they were they were amazing nailed it i can't do it you nailed it all the time you can just shout to me all you want to do it i will keep forgetting to do it i'm gonna get all right i'm gonna write on a bit of paper whack shots right and every patient you have i'm going to stick it to the side of the patient's head for there so you're taking it out you can see whack shot or just come in the room and just stand behind just that's the idea just just shake up your head every time you don't do it go back in now and yeah put it back in and then pull it back out again.

[00:05:13]Oh, fab.

[00:05:14]I know where it's like, especially if you've had a tough wax removal. Because there's a couple of mine I've put in and I thought, oh, I didn't hold the wax. But I remember at the time thinking, oh, this is just non-budget. And they'd get out and be like, yes, it's gone.

[00:05:23]I forget to hold it.

[00:05:25]I've given in. I've put a little bit of oil in.

[00:05:28]Well, it'll help. Yeah.

[00:05:31]It's always that cast away to where the hair is, isn't it? Yeah.

[00:05:35]And this deeper section as well.

[00:05:37]It's quite likely the patient has tried to use a little bit of oil.

[00:05:40]I mean, probably not a great deal looking at how hard this is. But I was just going to say, when you've got a complete blockage, the wax usually only affects like the first sort of the first third of the whole length of the wax plug.

[00:05:55]So that's basically what we've got now, is this really hard kind of, well, it's all stacked down in front of the eardrum. You can see the ear canal is starting to come through either side, but it's just getting that moving.

[00:06:08]that's the that's the biggest problem is holding that suction grip yeah the oil is working its way nicely i didn't want to i wanted to try and avoid getting the suction on that oil just to try and get it seeping underneath i can't remember if i do use a manual tool it's doing the job though isn't it it is it is coming it is coming it also take a little hairy caterpillar yeah yeah it does yeah like those um yeah i know yeah i know the other ones yeah but you know when you've got i was gonna say when you go here sometimes you're lucky you can grip it with a set of forceps yeah pull the hair and there's just enough hair embedded into the wax it'll pull the whole thing forward that's going to break away i think isn't it yeah that's not what happened here but sometimes it happens sometimes it comes away nicely trying to get those jaws either side of that plug now you can see it straight away it's not just almost scraping along the surface isn't it yeah but clearing some of the hairs will help yeah it'll it usually helps get a better grip yeah again sometimes it'll pull a little bit of the wax away as well you'll get like a flatter surface you're able to get a much better grip on because with that one as well you have that knobbly bit right at the front there as you try and pull that around that s bend we were talking about a couple of videos ago it's going to hit the wall and you're not going to pull it around i was kind of hoping that there's some of those hairs were going to like be yeah still attached in the center of that uh that plug oh i don't know i can obviously see some movement i can obviously feel a bit of resistance there as well anyway i've got that little gap there just the top now so i'm just gonna without trying to without pushing this any further in there we go create a bit more of a gap that's the way a bit more of a gap you've got it you've got it moving yeah almost there.

[00:08:11]We always say to the patients at this point, there's going to be a little bit of pressure now, especially with these harder waxes and when there's not much room.

[00:08:18]We've got to try and roll that through. So I've switched the tool around to the right hook.

[00:08:26]I keep getting confused with the names of these.

[00:08:30]This is like a double-ended tool that we use. It's got the right curette on the one side and then the right hook on the opposite side. We just flip it over. You like this one, the double-ended tool?

[00:08:40]Yeah, the straight one. You use the crooked ones. I prefer the angled ones.

[00:08:50]I can see why when you've got it in the right position, basically.

[00:09:00]This is a tough one to do. difficult now because you're into that territory with the endoscope where you're beyond the haze on the outer part of the ear canal so you're looking through the endoscope through the haze but you can't get closer with the tool because you're gonna they're gonna collide you're gonna chopstick which is where they hit one another and click like this yeah there's obviously something that's holding this in place because like i i couldn't get this around that corner it's the wax fairies they're all inside holding on doing like this with their hairs on the other side we've been saving this up for years yeah do you want to be wax fairies or wax goblins that's got to be goblins you're just going wax goblins i was leading all those wax goblins there you go that's not a comment session guys hey we watched the Super Mario movie on the weekend me and Theo was it good?

[00:09:56]not the new one the old one oh yeah.

[00:10:00]I caught the second half of that with Theo.

[00:10:03]I did cast it was on TV oh that's a chunky one isn't it dark as well look at that nice and clean that's a lot that is a chunky piece so just that last piece that came out was that centimetre and a half and wide as well about four and a half centimetres roughly there just over four and a half centimetres yeah guys thank you so much for watching our video today if you do enjoy the videos don't forget you can always like, heart, share, follow and subscribe for me make sure you smash that notification bell as well guys that way then you get notified every single video we put up one little note which I haven't put on the subscribe videos from the 5th of May we are not going to be putting the videos the wax normal videos onto Facebook and Instagram we have a little eight week break because there's a bit of an algorithm issue going on which means our videos just keep getting flagged for loads of stuff all the time so we're trying to sort that out so we're going to give that a bit of an eight week break they will still be available on YouTube and TikTok though so you can still check them out there so just giving you some heads up just in case you don't have a YouTube or TikTok account you can check them out there alright but guys as always take care of yourselves take care of your ears and take care of one another myself and the lovely.

[00:11:09]Mr Taylor Green we'll see you again soon bye everybody bye bye