Dr. Ernest Ceriani examines a child with an infected ear. (Photo by Carl Iwasaki/Getty Images)
When I was a child, I became accustomed to ear infections. At least once a year, I would feel the telltale symptoms: pressure, the uncanny feeling of being underwater when I tried to swallow, and difficulty hearing out of the infected ear.
I was not alone. According to the Boston Children’s Hospital, ear infections are “the most common reason children visit their doctor,” and more than 80% of toddlers in the United States will experience an ear infection.
Our doctor encouraged my family to “wait it out” and to make a medical appointment if I began experiencing high fevers. Fortunately, these fevers rarely came. Most of the time, my symptoms were resolved without antibiotics or treatment. But as I learned, commonplace ear infections can result in lifelong hearing issues.
What Is An Ear Infection?
The most common ear infections refer to otitis media: a middle ear infection. According to Johns Hopkins Medicine, the human ear includes complex structures that connect to other parts of your face and head. For example, the eustachian tube connects the middle ear with your nasal-sinus cavity. This tube helps regulate your sense of balance and relieves pressure in your inner ear.
Structure Of The Human Ear. (Photo By Encyclopaedia Britannica/UIG Via Getty Images)
A healthy eustachian tube can open to drain mucus and fluids, but these tubes can become clogged. Eustachian tube disorders can cause middle ear infections.
How Can An Ear Infection Impact Hearing And Language?
An ear infection could be shrugged off as an inconvenient earache, but a 2023 study published in the International Journal of Pediatric Otorhinolaryngology warns about the long-term damage that chronic ear infections can cause.
Researchers Susan Nittrouer and Joanna Lowenstein studied 117 children to compare the children’s hearing and language proficiency. These children ranged from 5 to 10 years old. Children completed three tasks. First, they identified which cartoon character sounded different from other characters. The character may have spoken more loudly or at a different pitch than the other characters. Children with impaired hearing or delayed language processing struggled to distinguish these vocal differences. Second, the children participated in a vocabulary assessment. Third, children attempted to match words phonetically.
The findings suggest that children who experience chronic ear infections are more likely to have smaller vocabularies than children who have not had chronic ear infections. Children who had been diagnosed with multiple ear infections also struggled to identify different sounds like pitch changes.
Why might ear infections have these long-term implications on children’s audio processing and hearing? The first three years of development are vital to a child’s language learning. In these early years, children pick up on important sound nuances that help them process language later in life. Ear infections can cause fluid buildup and pressure in the ear. Over time, this repeated strain can damage the sensitive anatomy within a person’s ears. If a child has chronic ear infections, they may struggle to pick up on these language nuances that will help them develop the phonetic skills needed to learn the alphabet and sound out words.
As I grew into my preteen years, my ear infections grew less frequent but more severe. One day, I awoke disoriented, with fluid trickling out of my right ear and onto my pillow. My ear drum had burst. I never regained full hearing in my right ear.
Experts like Nittrouer and Lowenstein hope that additional research can shed more light on the connections between hearing, language development, and ear infections. In the meantime, pediatricians and parents alike advocate for more effective treatment options for ear infections and more accessible hearing tests.
Nittrouer, a professor of hearing and language sciences at the University of Florida, explained in a January press release, “Ear infections are so common that we tend to dismiss them as having no long-term effect ... Parents should be aware that their child may have some middle ear fluid without it being painful and work with their doctor to monitor their child closely.”
