Sunshine is a 2-year-old spayed calico that came to us because she had dirty, itchy left ear. There was scabbing on her head from where she injured herself during scratching. She was constantly shaking her head. A nurse got a sample of the ear debri with q-tips and looked at it under a microscope. Yeast and bacteria were found so the ears were cleaned and we prescribed an ear ointment to get rid of the infection. Looking back in her health records, Sunshine had a lot of problems with this ear. She was getting a lot of infections in it and each time the ear canal looked pretty good with redness but no masses. During this visit, Dr. Amy looked at her ear canal and saw that the ear drum was pink and bulging.
We sedated her to get xrays of her head and look for a polyp in her ear. Polyps are benign masses that grow from the inner ear structure or the ear canal itself. Sometimes they grow out the ear canal or down the eustachian tube into the mouth. They can cause recurring ear infections and respiratory infections depending on where they grow. Once we sedated Sunshine and looked at her radiographs, we could tell the inner ear structures were abnormal and she likely had a polyp. Getting a CT would have let us see what structures were affected but that was cost-prohibitive for Sunshine.
A little while later we sedate Sunshine and were able to see a clearly defined polyp in her left ear. It had been growing for almost 2 years! There’s a technique called traction and avulsion that we performed where we grasped the polyp at the based and pulled to remove it. We place pressure on the wound to give it time to clot and then let her wake up. Fortunately, Sunshine recovered well and had no problems. Some patients can have their third eyelid elevate and have trouble walking afterwards depending on where the polyp is anchored.
This technique fixing the problem for 85% of cats with polyps, but some have polyp regrowth. These cats might need a CT and they might go on to get another surgery called a VBO or ventral bulla ostectomy.