Earache

If your child has a sharp, dull, or burning pain in his ear, he's suffering an earache, a common reason parents take their children to the doctor.

Several things can cause earaches, including Swimmer's ear (where the skin of the ear canal is inflamed), pressure or elevation changes (that stretch the sensitive ear drum), and ear infections. The Eustachian tube runs from the middle of each ear to the back of the throat. This tube drains fluid normally made in the middle ear. If the tube gets blocked, fluid can build up, leading to infection. This can lead to pressure behind the ear drum or an ear infection.

If your child has an earache, your child will complain of ear pain. Babies with an earache will often be fussy and not sleep well. Many children have temporary hearing loss during, and right after, an ear infection or other cause of earache.

Children under 6 months old who might have an ear infection need to see a doctor. Your child's doctor will look inside the child's ear using an instrument called an otoscope. The doctor might see areas of redness, air bubbles behind the ear drum, and fluid inside the middle ear.

You can relieve an earache by placing a warm or cold pack or a warm or cold wet wash cloth to your child's ear for 20 minutes. For children old enough to safely chew gum, chewing may help relieve the pain and pressure of an earache. Oral pain medications or over-the-counter ear drops can help, as long as your child's eardrum has not ruptured. Vibrating devices, such as the EarDoc, are one way to relieve pain without medications.

If an infection caused your child's earache, it is very treatable, but it may come back again. If your child has to take an antibiotic, make sure he takes all of the medicine.

Earache

BookmarkBookmark

Review Date: 1/17/2025

Reviewed By: Charles I. Schwartz, MD, FAAP, Clinical Assistant Professor of Pediatrics, Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, General Pediatrician at PennCare for Kids, Phoenixville, PA. Also reviewed by David C. Dugdale, MD, Medical Director, Brenda Conaway, Editorial Director, and the A.D.A.M. Editorial team.

The information provided herein should not be used during any medical emergency or for the diagnosis or treatment of any medical condition. A licensed medical professional should be consulted for diagnosis and treatment of any and all medical conditions. Links to other sites are provided for information only -- they do not constitute endorsements of those other sites. No warranty of any kind, either expressed or implied, is made as to the accuracy, reliability, timeliness, or correctness of any translations made by a third-party service of the information provided herein into any other language.

© 1997- A.D.A.M., a business unit of Ebix, Inc. Any duplication or distribution of the information contained herein is strictly prohibited.

All content on this site including text, images, graphics, audio, video, data, metadata, and compilations is protected by copyright and other intellectual property laws. You may view the content for personal, noncommercial use. Any other use requires prior written consent from Ebix. You may not copy, reproduce, distribute, transmit, display, publish, reverse-engineer, adapt, modify, store beyond ordinary browser caching, index, mine, scrape, or create derivative works from this content. You may not use automated tools to access or extract content, including to create embeddings, vectors, datasets, or indexes for retrieval systems. Use of any content for training, fine-tuning, calibrating, testing, evaluating, or improving AI systems of any kind is prohibited without express written consent. This includes large language models, machine learning models, neural networks, generative systems, retrieval-augmented systems, and any software that ingests content to produce outputs. Any unauthorized use of the content including AI-related use is a violation of our rights and may result in legal action, damages, and statutory penalties to the fullest extent permitted by law. Ebix reserves the right to enforce its rights through legal, technological, and contractual measures.

Animations

Browse All

Illustrations

Browse All

Presentations

Browse All