Sebaceous Cysts Hidden Inside the Ear Canal – She Had No Idea They Were There – EP1277

Added: 2026-06-01

[00:00:00]coming up in today's video guys we've got two patients both are mine and we've got this really interesting one first um i had this patient come through to see myself feeling really blocked up you know this usual full of wax you know a bit of dry skin in there i thought oh yeah okay that's that's you know absolutely fine but when i took a look inside the both ears uh especially i think i want to say it's this one it might be the other ear i can't remember which one it is but um you'll see what i mean in a second by you know it being a little bit of a strange sort of um case yeah there's there's basically these little little tiny lumps uh that i could see in the ear the patient wasn't aware of them so we're just giving this a good old wiggle quite a quite a big plug coming over there yes wow that is a good one pretty pretty beefy one there now this year yeah it's the other one that has the little bumps on the outside now this one has a little one on the inside there at the bottom of the ear canal you can see that little white sort of lump at the bottom now i do try to remove it because i thought it was just a little bit of dead skin but as i put the suction to it it didn't really jump up but there so i don't really want to be poking and prodding against that uh patient didn't find it uncomfortable at all but i said oh look you know you've got this little you know bump inside the ear canal it looks like a pile of dead skin there's the little bumps like there's one there and i think there's one just underneath as well yeah there is yeah they're just getting a little trying to get a good look there's another one just to the left there as well now i i think these are what we call sebaceous cysts um which is they're generally nothing to to worry about but i've referred the patient anyway because she was unaware of them uh the only thing that kind of cropped up in the sort of history was that the patient's recently been on uh basically a period of steroids um quite strong steroids and has recently come off the steroid so i i don't know i couldn't be certain whether this is her body kind of reacting to the to the the sort of change in the medication uh but i'm not a hundred percent so i've gonna send a referral through just to get a gp take a look at these so sebaceous sister they're just like fleshy lumps basically and you get them anyway but they're like little lumpy bits and and if you press them they're kind of quite soft that's how you know usually they're cysts yeah um when uh mrs b read to her at shadow tonsils and spoke to the ent consultant there we we uh used quite a bit and um he was actually demonstrating he was showing me impressing him to him saying if he does this this is a suspicious system all right okay fair enough then uh so yeah i was quite that was a really interesting uh little kind of you wouldn't want my appointment um but yeah they do pop up everywhere and there's nothing to worry about as long as it's not too big that's the only time it would be an issue is if they are too big and it's blocking the canal the only other thing that the patient said to me in this case here was uh um before the steroids a patient used to get a lot of itching inside the ears a lot of skin growing in there used to have them done sort of you know regularly every six months but i think this was about 10 months since we last saw the patient um and the patient actually said when she started the steroids the the itching just completely went yeah um and the steroids wasn't for the ears it was for something completely different um but it seemed to really kind of you know help with the itching and the skin in the ear it was obviously building back up but she wasn't quite getting as much of that itching so i thought that was quite interesting actually it was uh it's it's looking lovely and clear as well you can see that a little bit of skin that was stuck to the right hand side and even that the plug looks wrapped in a little bit of skin isn't it it's a four centimeter just over four centimeters inch and three quarters i'm gonna go with that one so this is also yours yeah also lovely gent i think he was in his 90s um where's hearing aids uh basically got to the point where his hearing aids were just constantly just becoming blocked and he was having to clean them quite regularly so i thought oh do you know i'll i'll just go and get my ears checked and yeah it wasn't completely blocked i think this was the better of the two sides you could see the eardrum a little bit yeah you can see we got all this kind of uh like skin and wax all mixed in together yeah so it's a bit of a messy one it is we're going to just peel away this dry skin you can see where it's sort of working its way from that one corner isn't that yeah patient it wasn't really finding there was a a problem if anything he said his hearing aids just sounded a little bit quieter um sounded better you know obviously once the wax was removed but um yeah there was no real symptom without the hearing aids it was just a normal feeling ear canal so we're just using a fine end now just to clean up these last little tiny bits which like we said in katie's last video they're a bit of a pain these tiny bits because they i was waiting in there because i just you always wait for it to kind of go you know straight up the tube but not a whole lot to come out in one go it doesn't always happen doesn't always happen no um guys make sure you stay tuned for comment corner at the end as well did your question make it into comment corner this week uh there are two questions in there so you've got you've got a chance it's in there so make sure you take a look at the end it's definitely two people in there there's definitely two different people in there as well yeah definitely i do try and pick two different people every week if we can so yeah we'll do that way there we are just grabbing these last bits oh that was a nice one that was a nice bit of appeal there coming away a bit of an awkward right in the corner here now there we are that one's come away lovely as well luckily there was a bit of structure to the wax it wasn't soft or wet or sticky but brittle is the only way i would describe it just kind of breaking away in tiny little bits you wouldn't want those sort of soft sticky lumps down the floor against the eardrum because they would be able to tighten it together you would probably have to use a little bit of irrigation to get those out yeah and then i managed to take a little bit of that dry skin on the roof of the ear canal so yeah this was the this was the ear that was causing the most problem uh and as you can see it's a little bit more full uh kind of a very um similar case to the other ear where it's it's not a massive blockage but it's all like scattered bits that look that make it look really full so i've got this bottom bit where voice isn't as loud as uh it normally is today so guys talking too much i think it's coming away nicely at the bottom there though isn't it is it going to peel up because you've got that darker section further back which you'd love to be able to get a grip on but sometimes these front sections will hold it in place won't they i think that's what i'm trying to do there oh a bit of a wiggle yeah it's opened up a bit more space in there now yeah you can see why this one would have been quieter yeah you still got a little tiny gap just that just above the wax like kind of just above where the suction tube is now so again a bit of a slight reduction in hearing but uh yeah patient was so much so much better after this came out came away you can see it's quite a dry wax it's lots of haze embedded in there as well so it's going to make it a little bit more awkward because the haze won't hang onto the side yeah it gets stuck here i tried to wiggle it through but it's the sides are a little bit too a little bit too big so i had to kind of reposition try and like kind of shimmy it around a little bit and there we go a little bit left at the bottom there now eardrum is lovely and clear now though it's a bit of staining as well that's all but you know the staining is transfer of the oil and the kind of you know the color of the wax basically just transfer into the canal walls that's doing that same thing it's just blocking the end of the tube up yeah there's a bit of an awkwardness because i could see the ear canal was right underneath this i couldn't really put much pressure on this but i was waiting for it to kind of lift and peel off the ear canal it wasn't here i just appeared out of nowhere but it just wasn't doing that we we managed to kind of move it slightly here it was lush the guy um on his way out um he turned back to me and he said thanks for being so gentle with me don't don't smell too bad don't come back anytime anytime yeah they are sweet a lot of the persons are really uh angel quarter uh just over three centimeters there okay so see what's in comments corner this week now steven always throws me a bit of a curveball here because he always comes up with a question i have to really think about and most of the time i just rattle them off but i usually got to come out i think i remember he stumped me with uh exostosis once as well that threw me for ages um so steven's asked how do the qualifications differ between working on an adult and a pediatric patient do you know what this is a really interesting topic this one okay and i think what i'm going to do this steven i'm going to do a dedicated video on this because when i've actually dug i i knew that the what was going on in the background when i actually dug into it i realized that there's probably a lot of people out there seeing pediatric patients that really shouldn't be um there is no specific qualification you can do that i'm aware of and i have done some research today as well just to make sure i was saying the right thing uh here in the uk that entitles you to see a pediatric patient okay it's they can't depend on when you qualified because i think with with myself yeah so in the it's probably the same in like uh you know america canada you know it's probably the same everywhere else but we've got different levels of qualifications you've got it's not just that though that's not just this is why it gets really confusing right because i i with my course my qualification is purely just hearing a kid related um and obviously wax removal as well i for the for the next level up was an extra year in uni but that all was purely pediatric and uh vestibular so so the the the the basics of it is unless you've had experience in working in a pediatric department with kids uh there is no earwax removal qualification in the uk that currently allows you to work with children unless you've had that back ground as well all right so that that's that that's the key nuance and i've done my research today but i'm going to dedicate a video on that one all right just so i was coming up um the last one here is how does wearing hearing aids impact the ear's ability to clear wax and dead skin depends on the style i mean the most hearing aids are in the ear and they uh especially uh a hearing that sits around the top of the small receiver they sit deeper in the wax i yeah your ears have little glands that produce wax which is probably as far as you can reach with your finger and that produces wax very slowly over time now you might be lucky when you're using your hearing aids and you might get wax coming out with your hearing aid but you also may have wax being pushed further in with the hearing aid which is why we always suggest getting your ears checked regularly if you wear hearing aids okay so six to twelve months because the ear is always trying to expel the wax that's what it does that's it's got a perfect self cleaning mechanism i did a video on that which is with about q-tips as well so i'll time for a link up here so you can check that one as well um but yeah so basically it's always trying to self clean but with anything that plugs the end of the year as a hearing aid does you'll find the wax can't get out so it starts to build up around the end of the hearing aid and as taylor says sometimes you're lucky you take the hearing aid out the wax will be attached sometimes you're unlucky and it starts to build up so it's always worth if you wear hearing aids getting your ears checked every six to twelve months just to make sure there's been no wax buildup in there for you well guys comment corner put your questions in the comments below and that way then we get to read them out as we've done today and answer them live uh well blame for this video um well guys thank you so much for watching our video today i hope you enjoyed it as much as we did don't forget you can always like heart share follow and subscribe and if you thoroughly enjoy the video as steven is at the top then you become a member of the channel i can see his little members badge so i know you remember um so you can become members of the channel as well that way then you get to see two more videos every single week um but until next time guys as always take care of yourselves take care of you and take care of one of that myself and a lovely mr green we'll see you for the next video bye everybody bye