Funnily enough I was looking at something similar a little while ago on Amazon that would relay images to an iPhone etc. I keep having a sensation of pressure on the right and it would be nice to determine if this is due to some impacted wax or not.
Yep, same here. I also wasn’t hearing well out of my left ear. The mini cam showed wax in both ears, but the left inner canal was almost completely blocked with wax.
So I bought some ear wax dissolver from the druggist, just over the counter stuff, and used it for 3 days, then flushed it out with the ear flushing device form Amazon, and a little help from my wife.
The balance knob on my SN2 is back to center now. Whoo-hoo!
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I picked my digital otoscope up yesterday. Unfortunately, unless the LED lighting is poor mine is not a wax related and I either have bilateral tympanic haemorrhages or more concerning a possible glomus tumour on the left or both sides.
I’m hopeful it’s haemorrhage as the pressure effects on the left are intermittent and tend to be be when I’m experiencing allergic sniffles.
Despite potentially knowing better I do use cotton buds to try to remove ear wax, though had considered myself fairly conservative in their usage, perhaps not, so traumatic haemorrhage is also a possibility.
Cotton buds cause damage to drums and ear canals. They also usually plug the wax. Think loading a cannonball into a cannon!
I used to suprse patients when I looked in their ears by telling them they had used a bud. I would see a wall of smoothly polished wax or a spotless but grazed canal and a slightly red drum from trauma.
Don’t use. Ever. Also tend to worsen dry skin and eczema in the ear canal which then causes blocking and so onwards. Ear eczema causes more blocking than just wax.
If you want then use oil regularly. Suction by a professional if you absolutely must but 95% of ear syringing we did at the surgery was unnecessary if people stopped fiddling with their ears etc.
You are supposed to have ear wax. It waterproofs and also traps debris. It is only produced in the outer third of the canal. If you poke stuff in your ears you just push it further in
THE ONLY THING YOU SHOULD PUT IN YOUR EAR IS YOUR ELBOW.
Here endeth my lecture.
Bruce
PS I have seen glomus tumour but they are incredibly rare. Simultaneous and bilateral would be ridiculously unlikely!
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Hi Bruce, yes cotton buds are bad, I should know better, but have been pretty careful over the years but we are our worst enemies at times. My old otoscope/auroscope is somewhere in storage and naturally I wouldn’t be able to use it on myself! When I saw a digital otoscope for under £40 I thought it was worth a punt to exclude significant wax impaction either side - very little in fact but both tympanic membranes have dark blue regions, hence hopefully just haemorrhage but given recent pulsatile tinnitus on the left I naturally wonder about rarer issues.
I was hoping the pressure in my left year was due to Eustachian tube dysfunction or possibe allergy especially as decongenstants/antihistamines in the past used to settle it.
It started maybe 5 years ago and has been very intermittent (good in my view).
I nearly elaborated in the pusatile tinnitus thread on esoteric causes.
That is the main thing making me think it’s bilateral haemorrhage. I have frequently tried to clear my years using a Valsalva manouevre, perhaps not the best if I’ve tried to hard. If you saw my BP today you’d think I had malignant hypertension, it’s been far better in preceding days. I seriously need an MOT, how many people have been putting things off during the pandemic!
Reluctant as I am to diagnose like this but ‘dark blue’ areas in the drum are probably normal. A healthy drum is thin and transparent and can look grey/blue
The second image has trauma damage at the rim. Typical of a ‘bud’
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Repeated valsalva bad idea. If you must then try steam and menthol to clear the airway etc. Absolutely do not take a decongestant if you have BP. They are generally rubbish anyway
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Entirely appreciate that, but your grounded and experienced thoughts are helpful, many thanks. My regular GP has been unavailable for some time, certain things have gone quite out of control during lockdown for me, this will be the nudge I needed to get a comprehensive review.
Yes, it looks like you have a different situation to my easy ear wax buildup excess. And if my left ear had the same average buildup that my right ear had, I would have just let it be. The ear cam was great thro, for showing me what was actually wrong.
I rarely use OTC deongestants , and have always felt phenylephrine based ones have been pretty poor compared to pseudoephedrine based ones which pharmacies more tightly control these days, especially since their use in ‘stacks’ by athletes/body-builders.
I appreciate there are risks involved with hypertesnion, but occasionally they are the only things that will alleviate occasional severe sinusitis which I’ve thankfully not had for a few years now.
Pretty impressive technology in fairness for the cost, though I would urge caution to anyone thinking of getting one, as if at all possible you’d be better off getting a professional evaluation - I primarily got mine as I thought it might confirm impacted wax which I could then treat or get professionally removed. Very little wax if any, but some slightly concerning appearances for me but at least it’ll make me get it investigated further.
I do have a pretty in depth knowledge of the anatomy etc, hence my comments about normally being careful with cotton buds (more accurately I’m echoing Bruce’s comments that they are a bad idea), but I’d not discount the possibility I’d overestimated my normally cautious approach!
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Well this is interesting and a salutary lesson.
I tried the device straight out of the box to test I could connect to iphone (some -ve reveiews), as it seemed to have charge I used it and there were initially areas that appeared quite differently red, almost polypoid as in your second image.
Subsequently put it on charge and now things look a lot more homogeneous especially when the tip is cleaned - I’d not we hard pressed now to tell any difference between the 2 sides, the tympanic membrane looking quite grey/dark blue on each side, potentially normal - afraid I may have invoked a storm in a teacup. Were the tiny LEDs a lot dimmer out of the box, have I got a bit more adept at positioning it? Unsure.
As a tool for looking for lots of impacted wax it seems great for the cost, but beyond that naturally limited by the price. Fascinating what we can get relatively cheaply nonetheless, just have to appreciate limitations of devices for the cost.
Not asking for any diagnostic comment Bruce, but pretty impressive for £30-40.
There is also a proximity sensor that tells you that you are getting too close (green to red LED type scale, though there ought to be audio warnings too). I suspect the focal distance is set to be safe too so that you’re not tempted to go ‘deeper’ for better clarity.
Images may well be inverted as it’s tricky to orientate the thing along with various ‘flip’ icons!
If those are the best images you can get the device is not worth a fiver let alone £30 in my view! Probably normal but no way good enough to see anything other than gross changes, or maybe a big plug of wax.
When trainees start looking in ears they realise that there is wide natural variation and also considerable skill in using an otoscope. That is before you even begin to interpret what you are seeing, which requires other information and examination too.
Don’t use cheap tools and don’t mess about with stuff you don’t understand is a home DIY adage that I would suggest also applies here! I would include ‘a cheap digital otoscope’ in the list of things not to put in your ear. Along with pretty much everything else 
At least it does not look like you have stuffed a cotton bud through a drum. Seen a few of those. One had to be removed in the operating theatre. He was copying his Mum after he saw her cleaning her ears then a sibling thought it was funny to come and slap the hand holding the cotton bud. Bit of a mess.
Hope you get your issues sorted.
Cheers
Bruce
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As my mum used to say - Don’t put anything smaller than your elbow in your ear.
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See my post a little earlier. Same, but in capitals!
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Absolutely - although it does drive me nuts when the same pts regularly ignore this advice and then wonder why they repeatedly get impacted wax obscuring the EAC 
…and you’d need to be a contortionist to do that !
I think that’s the point you shouldn’t be putting anything in your ear.
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They’re not the best pics the thing can give in fairness, I was just rather intrigued by it and only wanted to see if I had a big plug of wax on the one side. I think they’re blurred as the little camera at the tip gets a mild smudgy coating of cerumen as is passes into the canal brushing against hairs.
It produces fairly crisp images of everyday objects with good lighting, for example lettering on a keyboard key or detail on a coin - I suspect the tiny LEDs are not really up to illuminating anything particularly well in a dark area and gave artefcatual appearances which twitched me initially.
So, maybe ok to see a chunk of wax but beyond that not particularly useful. It was cheap but I couldn’t recommend anyone trying one or attempting to remove wax using some odd little accessories, admittedly people might be lucky, but the risks would far outweigh getting things evaluated and treated properly.