What causes boils in ear and how to treat them? – Dr. Satish Babu K

If we look at the ear, the pinna has a lot of hair follicles as we can observe. As well as the ear canal, which leads to the eardrum also has a bit of follicles and sweat glands especially in the outer one third of the length. That’s about 7 or 8 mm in length. So a furuncle or a boil can happen in this area and can be very painful, whereas a pimple on the face is not so painful, because the skin is loose, it is not attached to any structures. In the ear, the skin is very tightly attached to the cartilage, that is soft bone. That is why when there is a stretching, there is tremendous pain. So it is more symptomatic than the pimple elsewhere.it has to be treated like a pimple with antiseptic creams, pain killers and if the pimple is worsening, then you need an antibiotic. Local application of heat will also help, where you apply hot water bag around the ear so that it will smoothen the pain sensation. You can apply antibiotic creams with a q tip or an ear bud gently around the ear canal and that will give you a relief. When it is nice and pointing when you see a whit bleb like thing which is filled with pus, then the skin around that is totally dead and insensitive and that can be removed. So not well formed or premature furuncle or a boil cannot be dealt with because you are actually touching a normal skin which is actually viable and creating a wound in a septic area which is worsen the situation. Sometimes the infection may spread around and make it more complicated. So a pointing pus can be drained but not a fully formed furuncle. Since there are no hair follicles in the middle ear and the inner ear, you are not liable to get any boils here. So if you get any pain from here, the deeper part of the ear, the reason could be something lesser. So it has to be looked by a specialist and then treated.