It’s always impressive when someone sets a world record, whether it’s by running the most marathons or being able to eat a tin of baked beans real fast, it’s an achievement.
One fella has just joined the (unofficial) long list of record-setters, not by doing some impressive athletic feat, or by doing something ridiculously fast, but by removing what he says is the ‘world’s longest chunk of earwax’ from a patient’s ear.
Consultant audiologist Neel Raithatha pulled the long (and pretty gross) clump out of his patient’s ear canal, only to discover it was 2.5cm long.
While that already sounds pretty big, it’s even more impressive when you consider the average ear canal is only 3cm long.
Neel, who works at The Hear Clinic & Clearwax in Leicestershire, has seen his fair share of earwax over the years, but he was baffled when he tackled the gigantic blockage back in February.
Using endoscopic cup suction, Neel took hold of the wax, which was blocking the patient’s ear canal, and impressively removed it in one whole piece.
He said:
Both the client and I were in complete shock.
My reaction upon removal was ‘wow’ and the client’s reaction when he saw the piece of ear wax himself was to say ‘oh my goodness’.
Fortunately, the eardrum was intact and healthy.
It sounds like Neel’s patient was lucky on this occasion, as the audiologist has previously spoken about having spent 10 minutes chiselling earwax out of a patient’s ear after it hardened too much to be removed in one fell swoop.
He said:
This client had extremely stubborn and impacted earwax.
It’s not a serious health risk, except that a person’s hearing can be so badly affected they can no longer hear important environment sounds, such as oncoming traffic.
It would have been impossible for the patient to remove the earwax by themselves because it was so severely impacted.
Earwax forms with the purpose of protecting the ear from dust, foreign particles and microorganisms, while protecting the ear canal from irritation due to water. For the most part, any excess wax finds its way out of the canal and into the ear opening naturally, allowing it to be washed away naturally.
However, people must be careful if attempting to clean their ears, as using cotton swabs, bobby pins or other objects can push wax deeper and create a blockage.
Our obsession with human bodily functions continues.
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Emma Rosemurgey is an NCTJ trained Journalist who started her career by producing The Royal Rosemurgey newspaper in 2004, which kept her family up to date with the goings on of her sleepy north east village. She graduated from the University of Central Lancashire in Preston and started her career in regional newspapers before joining Tyla (formerly Pretty 52) in 2017, and progressing onto UNILAD in 2019.