/ 8 April 2006

Cape study says roaches are top earbugs

If an insect is going to crawl into your ear while you’re sleeping, it will most likely be a cockroach, according to the South African Medical Journal.

The latest edition of the journal carries a list, compiled by Cape Town doctor Gary Kroukamp and entomologist Jason Londt, of the bugs hauled out of patients’ ears over a two-year period at Cape Town’s Tygerberg Hospital.

There were 24 insect extractions, of which ten were cockroaches.

Notes by the medical staff who retrieved the bugs said that in one case, a cockroach had been in the ear of a two-year-old boy for a week before it was removed.

A typical note was ”crawled into ear in early hours of morning”.

Other bugs removed from ears were flies, beetles, moths and a tick.

”Unfortunately the general condition of recovered specimens made their identification beyond [scientific] family level difficult,” Kroukamp and Londt said.

”Specimens were often crushed, and in some instances only a few fragments were preserved.”

They said the finding that cockroaches were the most common earbugs echoed those of studies elsewhere in the world.

”Cockroaches usually enter the ears of people [mostly children] at night while they are asleep. The service area of Tygerberg Hospital includes a relatively economically impoverished community where control of household pests may be inadequate.”

They said the insects usually caused only minor annoyance, but their movements in the ear canal could be distressing and painful, and even damage the canal or the eardrum.

The brief biography of Kroukamp, an ear, nose and throat specialist, attached to the article said he ”dislikes flies and cockroaches, has never had either in his own ear, and would prefer to keep it that way”. – Sapa