5. Parents brought their 3-year-old daughter to an urgent care facility because she had been crying all day. The child was irritable, had scant otorrhea, and had been pulling on her right ear.
Photo courtesy of William Clark, MD. Reprinted from The Color Atlas of Family Medicine. 2nd ed.
Diagnosis: Otoscopy revealed an erythematous, swollen external auditory canal and a foreign object. The parents reported that their child had been playing with a toy beaded necklace when she started crying. The patient was referred to an otolaryngologist, who removed the bead using an operating microscope for visualization. She evaluated the child for a co-existing otitis externa and decided that the external canal was markedly inflamed and probably infected.
For more information, see “Object in ear.” J Fam Pract. 2013.