This is kind of long...sorry. But I can tell you about a few surgical procedures I've had done on a couple of dogs. Also in the course of things learned about 1 procedure that just made me shake my head as to why any vet would suggest it for a dog that still had some hearing left in the infected ear.
You dog, if it's already had several ear infections....will probably never go a year without one...that's been my experience with a couple of dogs. Hopefully I'm wrong, but from what several vets told me, chronic ear infections are often due to a very steep vertical ear canal that doesn't drain well.
Back in the 1980's I had a dog who after 6 years and sometimes twice a year would get massive ear infections in 1 ear, I finally asked my vet to do something. He said he could, but it was an operation that one had to be very careful with the dog's ear afterwards.
As I recall, he said my dog's ear canal sloped down to steep and dirt and stuff was getting in there and infections were happening due to lack of good drainage.
At a certain point the vertical part of the ear canal instead of being a vertical slope turns 'inward' horizontally. He called the operation a ZEPP procedure and he basically cut the whole vertical ear canal out...leaving an opening around the actual hole in the skull. The horizontal canal that was left...there's not much to it, so after that I did have to be very careful about her getting mud and dirt in there and doing any kind of cleaning...as her hearing organs were very close to the hole. My dog, Sampson, had floppy ears, so unless one looked...you would never know she had the ear operation (yeah, Sampson was a she...long story...lol)
Like I said this was back in the early 1980's...but it appears the operation is still being performed...here's a link to it...and photos of how the canal is cut out. (they just show an outline...no actual wound or surgery).
Lateral Ear Resection
The other operation that I had done on a dog, was on my dog Lacey, who I adopted when she was 8 years old. I hadn't even got her home from the shelter and the smell in the car was horrible. I thought maybe at the shelter she had laid in some waste. But once in the house and in looking at her...I lifted her ear up and almost gagged. The shelter folks had been overloaded that summer and Lacey had been there almost a year. She had been checked out by a vet 6 months prior, kept outside most of the time, so no one noticed the smell...or apparently her head being held at a bent angle.
Anyway, after dealing with her ear infection for a year with the vet that took over the clinic from the vet who did Sampson's ears... I was almost in tears that the infection still hadn't gone away...in spite of cleansings, antibiotic ointments, and shots.
One day I ran out of stuff and my vet was gone, so I took her to the fancier clinic in town...and that vet's suggestion was the one that made me sick to even think about. She wanted to just core out the whole ear, to get rid of infection, then cut and close a flap up over the ear hole....destroying the dogs hearing! I told her that that was ludicrous because back in the 1980's I had my old vet save a dog's hearing using that Zepp procedure. She said they really didn't do that anymore...and I found out later she was wrong. I said there had to be a better way then to purposely destroy Lacey's hearing...as she still could hear out of the ear.
Then I went back to my vet and told her what happened...and she was like...noo no no...there's no reason to do that with Lacey. And...lol...the reason why she was gone...was that she had just come back from a seminar on a new procedure to help dogs who've had chronic long term ear infections.
When dogs have long term infections...they eventually develop lumps/bumps in the ear canal...which do two things...trap more junk, making it harder to clean the ears...but they can even close the ear canal up as bump meets bump inside the canal. The procedure she used on Lacey, as she described it was something like this....sorry I don't know the name of the procedure.
She 'cored' the canal of the major bumps...cutting them off...and then with a syringe filled with a special medicine, she injected each cut area, plus injected the smaller bumps she could find. I *think* the medicine kept the bumps from coming back or growing bigger. Plus she put Lacey on an antibiotic and we followed through with that absolutely.
Your dog might not need the operation I just mentioned because it takes time and a lot of infections for those bumps to form. Both vets, by the way, when I adopted Lacey...they recognized her and said the former owners would bring her in with an ear infection...get meds, were suppose to come back in 2 weeks for another look and probably more meds if the infection didn't clear up...but Always they skipped the 2nd visit. They would probably see the ear looking better, give up on the meds...then...the infection which hadn't been cleared up all the way would get bad again., and the owners wouldn't do anything about it until the ear was totally clogged with junk and blood.
Anyway with both Sampson and Lacey, after the operations...both never had ear infections again. I also got lucky in that it was just one ear on each dog that had issues and avoided having to have both ears operated on with each dog.
It might be too early for you to see about an operation, but it's worth asking your vet about...just in case. And check around if they suggest that operation that destroys the dog's hearing because there are other treatments out there.
Stormy
