If you have an ear infection, you should not rush off to your pharmacy to purchase medications. This is a wrong move for several reasons. First off, you are not a medical doctor or a pharmacist so you cannot diagnose yourself and prescribe drugs for the antibiotics for ear infection. In addition, you have no idea whether you are dealing with a viral or a bacterial infection so buying medication is, at best, a shot in the dark. The right move is to talk to a competent and experienced medical expert. This way, you get effective diagnosis and treatment. Below are the right steps you should take to ensure you get a permanent solution to the ear infection.
Consult a Medical Doctor
The first step is to consult a medical doctor. At this point, you do not need a specialist Ear Nose and Throat (ENT) doctor. Your primary healthcare practitioner will do. This doctor will examine your ear and carry out an effective diagnosis. If your condition requires a test, this doctor will refer you to a pathologist.
Get Tested
It does not pay to take antibiotics for ear infection without carrying out the right tests. In this case, a pathologist will put a cotton swab into your ear to get samples of the fluid or discharge from the ear. This means that the expert will carry out a culture and sensitivity test. Once this is done, it will be easy to isolate the pathogen causing the infection.
Culture and Sensitivity Test
This simply means that the pathogen has isolated a pathogen. The next step is to find out the drugs that will clear up the infection and the ones the pathogen will resist. If the pathogen causing the infection is sensitive to certain pathogens, it means these drugs will work. Your pathologist sends the result of his or her findings to your doctor and this expert prescribes a course of antibiotics for you.
Taking Your Medication the Right Way
Once your doctor prescribes a course of antibiotics for you, you should take your medication the right way. Usually, you should take the drugs for five or seven consecutive days in the right doses. After you complete the dose, you wait for a week or two and you go for another test. This test is to confirm if you still have traces of the pathogen in your system or if you have been completely cured. If the test result is negative, it means the antibiotics have done their job and you are completely cured of the ear infection.
