Greetings!
I'm writing on behalf of a friend, whom I'm trying to convert to a diver. He often has trouble equalizing below about 5ft or so, and wasn't sure if it might be due to the tubes he had in his ears as a child (which have long since been removed). I told him I'd toss him in the deep end of a pool and teach him some equalizing tricks, in case he's just lacking experience, but I'm curious to see whether anyone on here has experienced similar problems.
So those of you who have had or know someone who has had tubes at some point - do you have difficulty equalizing and do you have any advice for him?
Thanks so much!
~Juliette
Hi, Juliette... welcome to the forum!
I am assuming that an ear doctor has taken a look at your friend's ears at some point to make sure that there isn't some other more serious problem there (such as a hole in the eardrum, severe scarring, etc...).
The reason for placing ear tubes is to compensate for a poorly functioning Eustachian tube in children. Most children have some degree of Eustachian tube dysfunction, which means that those with the poorest function may have recurrent ear infections, chronic ear fluid, or both. Virtually all children with this problem outgrow it, usually by around age 4. However, there is a bell curve for everything, and there are a few kids who will have persistent ear disease lasting into later childhood, even into the teenage years. But for the vast majority of children, this is something that they grow out of quickly - which is why the tubes are designed to come out in 4-12 months. By the time that a set of tubes comes out, 85% of children will have improved to the point that they no longer require tube replacement.
As far as the implications of tubes for diving as an adult - the tubes themselves do not make it harder for a person to equalize their ears in later life. However, people who have had ear tubes - as a group - have worse overall Eustachian tube dysfunction than those who have not. If you tested the ET function of 1000 adults who had never had tubes, and compared it to 1000 adults who had tubes, you would find that on average the second group would do worse than the first. But it is not because the tubes have damaged the ET function. Rather, the history of ear tubes is a marker for people with relatively poor ET function. Still, the vast majority of people who have needed tubes as a child grow up to equalize just fine...
The easiest way to check ET function would be to try gentle shallow submersion in a swimming pool, with slow equalization using the standard methods. So you may be right that he just doesn't know the right way to equalize.
More information about childhood ear disease and ear tubes here:
http://www.kidsent.com
