Adenoids

[Dad12]

A consultant has recommended our son has his adenoids out. He is 2 years 1 month. Symptoms are mouth breathing, disturbed sleep, mild sleep apnea. He also has large tonsils. Does anyone have experience of a child this age having the procedure and can tell me risks, benefits, their experience. Thanks

[Saggarmakersbottomknocker]

Dad - both of my ds's had theirs out before 3 years old. That's tonsil and adenoids removal plus grommits inserted.

They were both in theatre for maybe a little over an hour, in hospital overnight. They both recovered really quickly, just having calpol or similar pain relief for a couple of days. They were eating normally within a day or two. The hospital encourages toast with crusts rather than ice cream

We noticed an improvement almost immediately. Both of them had hearing loss due to glue ear and ds1 came downstairs on his first day home to tell us about an odd noise in his room. It was the rain on the window! Ds2 was very similar to your son - he slept very badly which affected his behaviour during the day. Again this improved really quickly, although his sleeping habits took a little longer to settle.

Hope this helps.

[Dad12]

Thanks for your reply Saggarmakersbottomknocker (great name)..good news that your children's health improved as a result. A child just past two still seems so small and vunerable, the thought of surgery is very frightening and as parents we hesitate and delay. Was your little boy a mouth breather before the treatment and did it then stop?

[Saggarmakersbottomknocker]

Ds2 is still a mouth breather but I think it's a learned thing. He's a noisy eater too - he's lovely really lol! He still does have some problems in that his airways seem really narrow - even though he's a strapping 15 year old now. He gets dreadful sinusitis and has problems when we fly but I imagine it would be much worse had he not had his surgery.

[Tortington]

my dd had hers out - i'm such a crap mother all i can tell you is - we had noticed hearing loss and they sugested that this may help - looking back on it - it seems a little bizarre said like that - i must haev had a better explaination.

anyway. benefits - none.

she still snores.

[Dad12]

Its interesting that you think mouth breathing might be a learnt thing. When I did a search on this site for other messages about adenoids it seems to be an incredibly common problem, linked up to glue-ear and tonsil issues. Something I read which I did'nt like the sound of was the possibility of changes in face structure, pallate that can result..hopefully only in very severe and chronic cases. Sinusitis and flying problems are something I can easily empathise with, I get recurrent sinusitis problems and dread the effects of flying. Best thing I've discovered for sinusitis is this nasal sea-water spray. It comes out in a powerful fine mist that gets right up there and is basically just salt..so no problems with side effects or over-us. Has really helped me, I imagine killing bacteria and helping with drainage.