Remember when you were told not to put anything bigger than your elbow in your ear? The roaches weren’t listening. It is not uncommon to see patients in the emergency room with cockroaches in their ears. The cockroaches have an easy time crawling in but they aren’t very good at backing out. A moving cockroach in your external ear causes great pain and anxiety. In the ER, we fist put mineral oil or Lidocaine (an anesthetic liquid) in the ear to suffocate the trespassing creature. We then employ an “alligator forceps” – a long, thin tweezerlike instrument to pull the intruder out.
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"Can a cockroach get stuck in my ear?" was posted on Wednesday, March 5th, 2008 at 9:48 am.