What is an ear scan ?

A few weeks back, I took my dog to the vet and he ended up having an ear infection. His ears at the time were very clean on the outside, no black gunk but I did notice his ears seemed a bit painful and he was pawing at them.
When I brought it up the tech used a q-tip swab and was hardly able to collect any debris on the tip. The tech asked if I wanted them to do a "ear scan" which would be $36.00 ...

So I asked her what the purpose of the scan and she said to determine if his ears were infected and if so to know if it were a yeast or bacterial infection we were dealing with .

A couple miuntes later the vet came in and I told him about the ear issues and he took the tool (I'm going to call it an earlight with a long adaptor on the end) to look in his ears. When he pulled it out all this yellow-green stuff was on the end of it. same happened in the other ear.

He ended treating my dog for an ear bacteria and yeast infection. 2 very expensive meds.....

To me it seemed as if he treated him based on what he pulled out with the tool and ended up treating him for both yeast and bacteria anyway..

So I'm thinking what was the purpose of the ear scan ???? Do you think this is just one of those trumped up charges that I should refuse in the future ?


Things that make you go hhhhhhmmmmmmmmmm ?

Usually the ear is swabbed and the gunk is looked at under the microscope to determine if yeast, bacteria, or some combination of both is present.

Perhaps what they are calling an "ear scan" is really just a plain old "ear cytology"?

LOL I have never heard of a vet actually CHARGING to use an otoscope to look into ears unless they are doing a video exam (using a camera that is projected on a tv).

The only thing I can think of is like Sarah said, maybe an in-house ear cytology. Making a slide with a swabbed ear sample to look for any obvious yeast or bacteria...but it doesn't really even sound like they did that? ...very strange experience...