‘Kiss of deaf’: A kiss on the ear may permanently impair hearing

What's intended as a kiss on the cheek could easily end up on the ear with an overzealous turn of the head, but what you probably don't realize is that an innocent ear kiss could result in permanent hearing loss, reports Msnbc.com.

This condition, recently coined "cochlear ear-kiss injury," occurs when an overly strong suction from a kiss pulls on the eardrum and throws off the inner-ear alignment. In addition to hearing loss, this injury can also result in hearing distortion, ringing and sound sensitivity.

Dr. Levi Reiter, professor of audiology at Hofstra University in New York, started studying this injury five years ago, after a patient told him she went deaf in one ear immediately following a kiss from her daughter.

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"I thought this lady was a unique case," Reiters tells Msnbc.com. After doing a little digging, however, he found a similar story from back in the 1950s.

Then, after his first ear-kiss patient's story received coverage in Newsday in 2008, Reiter began hearing about similar cases all over the world. With his current ear-kiss injury tally sitting around 30, Reiter will soon send his research to both the International Journal of Audiology and the International Journal of Pediatric Otorhinolaryngology to help inform other doctors about his findings.

Since children have smaller ear canals, they are understandably more likely to experience cochlear ear-kiss injury, reports Msnbc.com. But unfortunately, Reiter says hearing loss in children isn't usually recognized until years after the damage occurs, since children aren't able to express themselves and the pain they might be feeling clearly enough to verbalize the severity of the injury.

"There are a lot of cases of unknown unilateral hearing loss in kids, and I am sure that a good portion are from a peck on the ear," he tells Msnbc.com.

Other causes of this type of hearing loss include impulse noise, a Q-tip being inserted too far into the ear canal and air being blown into the ear. And perhaps because of the other factors that can cause this type of damage, many doctors aren't taking patients seriously who come come to them with this type of injury.

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"People are going to doctors who are pooh-poohing this," says Reiter to Msnbc.com. "One reason these people wrote to me in the first place was because they were getting nowhere. The doctors were making fun of them. They felt humiliated."

While there is currently no treatment or cure for the "kiss of deaf," Reiter thinks a steroid injection through the eardrum, if administered within days of the damage, could help. This type of treatment is used in other forms of sudden deafness.

If there's one thing we can take away from all of this, it's steer clear of the ears when going in for a smooch, especially with babies.