By Jerry H.Hall
Millions of children every year suffer painful ear infections. And every year, parents look to their child's doctor for help in easing the pain. The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) and the American Academy of Family Physicians (AAFP) have released new guidelines to help physicians and parents decide on the best treatment for acute otitis media (AOM), or middle ear infection.
Next to the common cold, ear infections are the most commonly diagnosed childhood illness in the United States. More than three out of four children have had at least one ear infection by the time they reach 3 years of age. To understand how ear infections develop, it's important to first understand how the ear works.
Think about how you can feel speakers vibrate as you listen to your child's favorite CD in the car or how you feel your throat vibrate when you speak. Sound, which is made up of invisible waves of energy, causes these vibrations. Every time you hear a sound, the various structures of the ear have to work together to make sure the information gets to your brain.
The ear is responsible for hearing and balance and is made up of three parts - the outer ear, middle ear, and inner ear. Hearing begins when sound waves that travel through the air reach the outer ear, or pinna, which is the part of the ear you can see. The sound waves then travel from the pinna through the ear canal to the middle ear, which includes the eardrum (a thin layer of tissue) and three tiny bones called ossicles. When the eardrum vibrates, the ossicles amplify these vibrations and carry them to the inner ear.
The inner ear translates the vibrations into electric signals and sends them to the auditory nerve, which connects to the brain. When these nerve impulses reach the brain, they're interpreted as sound.
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