However, once medical treatment has begun, care should be taken not to get water in the ear while the infection is healing. In addition, applying a heating pad to the ear may help relieve pain. To help prevent this, place balls of lambswool in the ears while these substances are being used. Unlike cotton balls, which absorb liquid, lambswool tends to repel it. Exostoses grow extremely slowly and rarely reach a size where they become a problem.
Exostoses result from an overgrowth of bone.
The physician diagnoses these growths based on physical examination of the lumps. If there is any doubt as to their benign nature, a fluid or tissue sample is taken for laboratory examination. However, if they become large or are prone to recurrent infection, they may be removed surgically. If exostoses become large enough to block the ear canal, they, too, will have to be removed surgically a tricky procedure that requires that the skin covering be left intact because it is more resistant to infection than the tissue that may grow to replace it if removed. A foreign body is anything that gets stuck in the ear, ranging from bugs to seeds, pieces of plastic or paper, and even earplugs that cannot be removed.