Ear, nose and throat disease is one of the most common diseases that can be encountered in everyone’s life. Some people think that “ear, nose and throat diseases are not diseases”, so when they have stuffy nose, runny nose, tinnitus, deafness, hoarseness, sore throat and fever, they insist on not seeing a doctor, but first they hold on, and when they really can’t, they go to the drugstore and buy some medicine to eat.
Some people do care, and they rush to get medical treatment when their ears and nose are uncomfortable, but many people are not careful in seeking medical treatment or seek improper medical treatment, resulting in their own ear, nose and throat diseases are not cured for a long time, and some are even getting worse.
Ear, nose and throat common diseases mainly include: rhinitis, sinusitis, nasal polyps, pharyngitis, laryngitis, deafness, tinnitus and various parts of the tumor, etc., is a common disease, but is a difficult disease, not treated or improperly treated, and can even trigger or aggravate systemic diseases, so ear, nose and throat disease is not a trivial matter. But to cure ear, nose and throat diseases must first overcome several misconceptions.
Myth 1: Blindly believe in one-time cure
Due to the characteristics of ear, nose and throat diseases, treatment does not require expensive equipment or the cooperation of other professions to carry out the diagnosis and treatment of ear, nose and throat diseases. In the current medical market, especially after the opening of the medical market, almost all individual clinics and private hospitals have ENT departments, plus “one-time cure”, “one-time treatment”, “free follow-up The advertisements of “one-time cure”, “one-time treatment” and “free follow-up” are flying all over the place, and patients who do not know what to expect cannot afford the temptation of “one-time cure” and often go to the clinic as advertised, such as rhinitis, sinusitis, nasal polyps, pharyngitis patients, often get “laser”, microwave, “plasma” and other types of treatment. The “plasma” and other types of treatment, or direct nasal injection treatment, etc., after treatment, some patients do get relief from the symptoms. However, there are many risks and drawbacks.
1, due to the interest-driven, blindly expand the indications for treatment: such as microwave or laser treatment of the inferior turbinate for patients with severe nasal septal deviation, microwave treatment of nasal polyps, etc.. In fact, microwave or laser treatment only for moderate or mild simple inferior turbinate hypertrophy, can receive better results, other types of rhinitis, sinusitis or nasal polyps can only be temporary relief, the long-term effect is poor, it will not be long before the old problems will come back.
2, many complications can occur: such as nasal septum perforation; nasal turbinate bone necrosis, or even cause osteomyelitis; dry nasal disease; nasal adhesions and so on.
3, local nasal injection of drugs, mostly sclerosing agents, long-acting hormones and other types of drugs, which have a greater impact on the whole body, especially on female patients, disrupting the normal endocrine system, the domestic published “chronic rhinosinusitis treatment guidelines” has been clearly prohibited local injection.
The second misconception: drugstore to buy some drugs to eat even if treatment
Some patients with pharyngitis or laryngitis do not distinguish between specific cases and casually buy some chemistry or take some oral anti-inflammatory drugs even if they are treated, which is a treatment misconception.
The reason is that there are many causes of chronic laryngitis, in addition to local lesions, many systemic diseases such as reflux esophagitis, vitamin deficiency, endocrine disorders, etc. can also cause the symptoms of chronic laryngitis; sometimes the early manifestation of tumors in the throat is also chronic laryngitis. Special habits, poor working environment and living environment are often the causes of pharyngitis.
In treatment, there are many ladies who suffer from chronic pharyngitis and often worry about producing malignant changes. In fact, it is more common for patients with chronic pharyngitis to not be overly anxious as long as there is no discomfort during meals and no organic lesions are found after laryngoscopy or esophagogram, because chronic pharyngitis does not usually cause other diseases and is less dangerous. Some pharyngitis patients are too obsessed with antibiotic treatment, which is very bad.
The actual fact is that you will be able to get a lot more than just a few of the most effective and most effective products.
Therefore, you must go to a regular hospital to receive systematic examination, to exclude organic lesions, for the cause of treatment, in order to have a good effect. It is also important to develop good habits after treatment: quit smoking and drinking, eat less spicy stimulating food, life, work and rest must be regular, etc., you can effectively prevent recurrence.
Misconception 3: nasal congestion can take cold medicine
Many people have nasal congestion, the first will think that the “cold”, to which the relevant experts pointed out that nasal congestion is a symptom of a variety of diseases, nasal turbinate hypertrophy, sinusitis, allergic rhinitis, nasal polyps, deviated nasal septum and nasopharyngeal carcinoma, brain tumors and other diseases can cause nasal congestion, can not only take cold medicine treatment on the line.
When treating nasal congestion, it is necessary to find out which cause it is and to treat the cause in order to receive good results. Such as nasal septum deviation, need surgery to correct; allergic rhinitis need local and systemic anti-allergic treatment; nasal polyps need to undergo minimally invasive nasal endoscopic surgery; malignant tumors need surgery to remove, and post-operative radiotherapy, etc..
Patients with rhinitis generally show nasal congestion, runny nose, open-mouth breathing during sleep, and nasal voice in speech. However, there are some people, especially children, who have heavy nasal congestion and nasal voice, but it is not rhinitis but adenoid hypertrophy. If the adenoids are excessively enlarged, they can block the posterior nostrils and cause nasal congestion, block the pharyngeal orifice of the eustachian tube and cause hearing loss and exudative otitis media, and cause facial developmental disorders such as long maxilla, high arched hard palate, misaligned teeth, protruding upper incisors, thick lips, and sluggish expressions due to long-term open-mouth breathing. For the treatment of this disease, surgical removal is taken.
Myth 4: There is no need to check and treat tinnitus
Tinnitus is just a symptom that can occur in a variety of diseases and must be highly valued for tinnitus examination and treatment. However, many people think that it is a natural symptom of old age, so there is no need to treat it.
In fact, the causes of tinnitus are very complex. It can be caused not only by diseases of the ear itself, but also most of the causes occur outside the ear, such as diabetes, hyperlipidemia, cervical spondylosis, vascular sclerosis, etc. Sometimes the causes cannot be found. Localized diseases of the middle or outer ear such as tympanic membrane entrapment, cloudiness, adhesions, perforation, and pus and fluid accumulation in the tympanic chamber can cause tinnitus.
Sometimes tinnitus may be a precursor or concomitant symptom of sudden deafness, or it may be the first symptom of an auditory neuroma. Sometimes tinnitus indicates some systemic or local changes, such as tinnitus in hypertensive patients or aggravation of existing tinnitus, which often indicates elevated blood pressure; tinnitus occurs after streptomycin injection, which indicates ototoxicity has occurred; quinine, salicylic acid and other drugs taken for a long time can also cause tinnitus.
”Tinnitus can cause hearing loss. For tinnitus, the cause of tinnitus should be determined as early as possible, and reasonable medication should be administered for the cause.
Misconception 5: Blindly listening to pure Chinese medicine preparations and prescriptions.
Due to the characteristics of certain diseases in ENT, it is difficult to achieve the treatment effect of cure or complete control with respect to the current level of scientific and technological development, and there are many “pure Chinese medicine preparations” and “prescriptions” in the market, which have “special effects” on neurological tinnitus and deafness. There are a lot of “special effects”, non-toxic side effects, can be taken for a long time, specialize in treating a certain disease, and so on.
Chinese medicine can play a supplementary role in the treatment and rehabilitation of certain ear, nose and throat diseases, but it plays a very limited role in diseases for which no special treatment is clearly available at present. Do not expect any “ancestral recipes” and do not believe in the myth of “special effects” to avoid delaying the disease and causing more harm to health. For example, the “gentian diarrhea liver pill”, which was commonly used to treat tinnitus and stuffy ears, is a Chinese medicinal preparation that can cause acute renal failure and is currently discontinued.
Myth 6: Blindly believe in some “high-tech” and “imported” new treatment methods
In our daily life, we often see advertisements and propaganda about the new invention of “clinical application of biological genes – nerve regeneration repair therapy” and “gene and regeneration triple therapy”, which breaks the thesis that nerves cannot be regenerated. These so-called new therapies have been designated by the academic community as modern scientific frauds, which cannot have special effects.
With the continuous development of modern science, new treatments will continue to emerge, but so far, although it has been found that certain nerve cells can be regenerated under certain conditions, they are still quite far from having functional nerve cells. Gene therapy for some specific diseases is also still in the experimental stage. Therefore, the current so-called nerve regeneration therapies for neurological deafness, such as congenital deafness, pharmacological deafness, and senile deafness, are not true. The current approach to neurological deafness is still based on prevention, supplemented by hearing aids, cochlear implants and other means, and hearing can be obtained after long-term rehabilitation and training.