Seamus Boyle has drafted a questionnaire titled, ‘To Determine Water Athletes Awareness of Surfers Ear or Exostosis and Attitudes to wearing Ear Plugs’. I am sending this questionnaire to triathlets, surfers, open water swimmers, sub aqua and to non-water athletes.

Click here to be directed to questionnaire

This is purely a questionnaire and no intervention will be performed. It has received Ethical Approval by the Ethics Department at Sligo University Hospital. I wish to gather as much data as possible and obviously discussing this through yourself would facilitate this. Similar study was performed in the UK (Awareness and attitudes towards external auditory canal exostosis and its preventability in surfers in the UK by S Morris et al).

Another study in Ireland determined 66% of Irish Surfers have exostosis, 88% unaware of their diagnosis.

I understand entirely if you can’t help for several reasons, but would be very grateful it you could. Here’s a link to the introduction to the questionnaire and questionnaire itself.

Kind Regards,

Dr Seamus Boyle

Kayaker, Triathlete, Open Water-Swimmer and ENT SpR Sligo University Hospital