Chronic mastoiditis: What you need to know

Chronic mastoiditis is one of the diseases related to the ear area, easily causing dangerous complications if not treated promptly. How to understand this disease, what are the causes of mastoiditis and what are the unpredictable complications if not treated promptly? These contents will be detailed in the following articles.

Chronic mastoiditis is a middle ear disease, which occurs when bacteria attack through the lining of the ear cavity and mastoid cells. The disease often progresses to mastoiditis or, in some cases, because the toxin of the bacteria is too strong, the inflammatory process does not stop at the middle ear area and goes straight to the mastoid bone.
This disease is common in children under 5 years old, especially the disease thrives in malnourished children. With the current era of strong antibiotic development, mastoiditis is less common than in the 1970s and 1980s and usually accounts for only about 0.1% of ENT emergency cases today.

Patients with mastoiditis often have some manifestations of otitis media, progressive disease leads to high fever, meningeal symptoms such as vomiting, convulsions, stiff neck.
In the ear area, there is a lot of pus, the condition of ear pain increases, spreading to the neck and half of the head. The patient's hearing ability gradually deteriorated, the eardrum became red again. The skin on the mastoid surface is swollen, red, and painful when pressed.

When mastoiditis, if the patient is not treated promptly, it will lead to extremely dangerous complications. One of the dangerous complications caused by chronic mastoiditis is inflammatory otitis media. This is an acute exacerbation of chronic mastoid otitis. However, this exacerbation contains many dangerous complications that can be life-threatening such as meningitis, brain abscess, and lateral vein inflammation.

When having mastoid pain, patients need to go to medical facilities to perform diagnostic methods. The paraclinical methods to support the diagnosis of the disease include X-ray method. Doctors will use 2 films, Schuller film, to see the entire mastoid bone is translucent, the cell septum is eroded, some small cells that communicate with each other can turn into opacities or appear bone resorption. Chausse III film may show fibula destruction, external semicircular fistula, and posterior supraatrial spur loss.
In addition, the ear tomography method was determined to help accurately diagnose mastoiditis.

Early detection and treatment of mastoid pain plays a very important role. If the patient develops pus in the ear, fever, ear pain or headache, should be examined for mastoiditis? The patient received surgical treatment for inflammation or medical treatment after surgery. To avoid complications when treating chronic mastoiditis, it is very important to use the correct treatment regimen for ear disease.
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