External Ear Tract Diseases

The external ear, which includes the auricle and the external auditory canal, comprises skin, cartilage, and any appendages connected. Like any other analogous tissues, the ear’s skin and cartilage can take a beating. The immune system reacts to damage to cells by triggering inflammation. Many different things can cause inflammation in the ear, but the most common ones fall into three main categories: viral, traumatic, and immunologic. We will not discuss infectious illnesses of the external ear here since they have already been covered in other topics. Radiation exposure (2), mechanical pressure from a phone or a headband, environmental insults, or irritants like chemicals used to clean hearing aids can all cause auricle inflammation. Atopic and autoimmune diseases are examples of immune-mediated inflammation. An etiology is not necessarily obvious, as with many diseases. The aforementioned idiopathic illnesses fall under the umbrella term “miscellaneous.”