Surfer's ear plagues SoCal surfers

Kent Wilson began surfing 15 years ago. At first the UCSD chemistry professor would lug his board two or three mornings a week to the La Jolla and Del Mar beaches; then nine years ago he switched to bodysurfing. He is still in the ocean six to ten hours each week. Over the years, he’s gradually refined his skill, and he’s acquired another, more tangible gift from the sea — the skull bones in his ears have grown together so that they now threaten Wilson with severe loss of hearing.

Wilson isn’t alone. Medical authorities say prolonged exposure to the cold of ocean water is afflicting increasing numbers of local surfers, divers, and ocean swimmers with the syndrome known as “exostoses,” bony blockages which can shut off hearing entirely. The disease is hardly a new one, according to Dr. Joseph DiBartolomeo, one of the foremost authorities on exostoses in Southern California. DiBartolomeo practices in Santa Barbara but he has a number of patients here, and Monday he was in town at the Hotel Del Coronado to warn a conference of ear specialists about the problem. He told them that the syndrome has plagued man sporadically throughout history, changing as different cultures developed different ways of irritating the ear.

He says, for example, that skulls of prehistoric man reveal exostoses probably caused by early man’s ferocious chewing needs. The disease next appeared about a thousand years ago among North American peoples known for carrying bas- kets harnessed to the tops of their heads — weight which actually flattened their skulls and affected the ear canal. Then it disappeared again until the last century, when it began troubling coastal dwellers in Europe and the U.S., and DiBartolomeo says the modern cause — the cold from ocean water exposure — has now been established.

“The skin inside the ear canal is thinner than the skin anywhere else in the body,” he says. It scarcely protects the skull bone which underlies the lower two-thirds of the ear canal from irritants like cold, and DiBartolomeo says the bony growths, painless in themselves, are a kind of protective response to the “environmental insult.” He says the disease can be arrested by simply stopping the regular exposure to the low temperatures. The lack of discomfort associated with the bone growth, however, means many sufferers don’t recognize their problem until its latter stages,when the treatment involves complex surgery to drill away at the growths.

DiBartolomeo says race is one factor which notably affects one’s risk of triggering the intrusive bone growth; exostoses never affects blacks, for example, and rarely bothers Orientals.Among whites, the ear specialist says the risk is a balance between one’s individual sensitivity and exposure to the cold sea water. “If you’re very sensitive but you only go out one day a year, you’re not going to get it,” he says.On the other hand,among white people who plunge into the local surf regularly, “the growth is inevitable,”he declares.

The first internal signs of the disease show up after as little as a year or two of regular exposure,and DiBartolomeo expresses frustration that so many ocean regulars don’t wear earplugs or diving hoods.He stresses that merely trapping and holding the water inside the ear (the way a hood does) will protect the canal since the water will then warm up (the crucial factor is cold,not moisture). But even though protection is readily available,and awareness of the problem is growing,DiBartolomeo expects its incidence to rise as greater numbers of people seek aquatic recreation. Wilson, the surfing chemistry professor, concurs.“ It’s easy to go in all yearround now.When I started 15 years ago, I really had to steel myself to get in that water in the middle of winter. But the wet suits are really good now, and you can be comfortable in the cold water year-round.”