Because middle ear infections most commonly occur in infants and young children who do not yet communicate well, a diagnosis of middle ear infection may be delayed or missed. Symptoms of middle ear infection can be similar to or occur with symptoms of other conditions, such as tonsillitis, headache, tooth problems, influenza, upper respiratory infection and TMJ....more about Middle ear infection »
For a diagnosis of Middle ear infection, the following list of conditions have been mentioned in sources as possible alternative diagnoses to consider during the diagnostic process for Middle ear infection:
The other diseases for which Middle ear infection is listed as a possible alternative diagnosis in their lists include:
Causes of Middle ear infection may include these medical conditions:
Commonly undiagnosed conditions in related areas may include:
Mild worm infections undiagnosed in children: Human worm infestations, esp. threadworm, can be overlooked in some cases, because it may cause only mild or even absent symptoms. Although the most common symptoms are anal itch (or vaginal itch), which are obvious in severe cases, milder conditions may fail to be noticed in children. In particular, it may interfere with the child's good night's sleep. Threadworm is a condition to consider in children with symptoms such as bedwetting (enuresis), difficulty sleeping, irritability, or other sleeping symptoms. Visual inspection of the region can often see the threadworms, at night when they are active, but they can also be missed this way, and multiple inspections can be warranted if worms are suspected. See the introduction to threadworm.
Antibiotics often causes diarrhea: The use of antibiotics are very likely to cause some level of diarrhea in patients. The reason is that antibiotics kill off not only "bad" bacteria, but can also kill the "good" bacteria in the gut. This leads to "digestive imbalance" where there are too few remaining "good" bacteria in the digestive system. The treatment is typically to use "probiotics", such as by eating yoghurt cultures containing more of the good bacteria. See digestive imbalance and probiotics.
Mesenteric adenitis misdiagnosed as appendicitis in children: Because appendicitis is one of the more feared conditions for a child with abdominal pain, it can be over-diagnosed (it can, of course, also fail to be diagnosed with fatal effect). One of the most common misdiagnosed is for children with mesenteric adenitis to be misdiagnosed as appendicitis. Fortunately, thus misdiagnosis is usually less serious than the reverse failure to diagnose appendicitis.
Blood pressure cuffs misdiagnose hypertension in children: One known misdiagnosis issue with hyperension, arises in relation to the simple equipment used to test blood pressure. The "cuff" around the arm to measure blood pressure can simply be too small to accurately test a child's blood pressure. This can lead to an incorrect diagnosis of a child with hypertension. The problem even has a name unofficially: "small cuff syndrome". See misdiagnosis of hypertension.
Children with migraine often misdiagnosed: A migraine often fails to be correctly diagnosed in pediatric patients. These patients are not the typical migraine sufferers, but migraines can also occur in children. See misdiagnosis of migraine or introduction to migraine.
Read these general articles with an overview of misdiagnosis issues.
When checking for a misdiagnosis of Middle ear infection or confirming a diagnosis of Middle ear infection, it is useful to consider what other medical conditions might be possible misdiagnoses or other alternative conditions relevant to diagnosis. These alternate diagnoses of Middle ear infection may already have been considered by your doctor or may need to be considered as possible alternative diagnoses or candidates for misdiagnosis of Middle ear infection. For a general overview of misdiagnosis issues for all diseases, see Overview of Misdiagnosis.
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