There are many causes of hearing loss. How would I know if I had a cholesteatoma?
Hearing loss would be one of the first symptoms, but not the only one. You’d usually also notice a discharge from the ear. Often the discharge will have a very unpleasant odor. If it’s not treated, it can lead to deafness, dizziness and severe imbalance. There may also be numbness or even paralysis of the facial muscles. But even those symptoms could have other causes, so it’s up to your otologist to make the definitive diagnosis. In the case of a congenital cholesteatoma, which grows somewhat differently than the more common cholestatoma associated with infection, there are often no symptoms until it becomes quite large. Congenital cholesteatomas start growing at birth, and often a child’s pediatrician will detect the cholesteatoma visually during a regular examination and will refer the child to an otologist.
