Glue ear - Grommets or hearing aid - WWYD?

[Noomininoo]

My DD1 (4.5yo) has just been diagnosed with moderate hearing loss in both ears due to glue ear. We first noticed there might be a problem back last year and went to see the Dr in February but due to the wonderful world of the NHS waiting list she has only now been given a hearing test.

The ENT specialist said that as it has been going on for so long & her hearing loss is sufficient to cause potential development problems some correction was needed. He gave us the option of either having grommets inserted or having DD1 wear a hearing aid. We immediately went for the hearing aid as we didn't really want to put our DD1 through a surgical procedure if we didn't have to. We're now wondering if we did the right thing?

From the research we've done on grommet insertion it seems that, although it is a surgical procedure, its a fairly quick, safe & straight forward one & has a pretty good success rate. The downsides as we see it are:

a) it's still a surgical procedure which requires DD1 to go under a general anaesthetic (& all the risks (albeit small) that that entails).
b) its quite likely that (as the glue ear looks here to stay for the time being) she'll need another grommet inserted when this one falls out
c) there's a higher risk of ear infection with a grommet
d) she'll need to take special precautions when going swimming (DD1 has weekly swimming lessons) & having baths
e) having to go into hospital for an operation is going to be pretty scary for a 4.5 yo

On the other hand, hearing aids are are far less invasive (& frightening) for DD1 but they're also far more visible. I don't really want my daughter stigmatised or (heaven forbid) picked on for wearing a hearing aid.

Has anyone got any experience with this? Grateful for any advice...

No experience, though I did know quite a few children that had had grommets inserted for glue ear and it's certainly what I would go for if I was presented with your Dd's circumstances and your options.

I can only speak of our experience.
Ds has sn and his consultant didn't think a hearing aid was ideal in his case. So Ds had a grommet in one ear. He recovered quickly from the anasthetic and was home very quickly.
Bathing/hairwashing was fine - we were advised to put cottonwool covered in vaseline in his ear. Obviously we kept an eye on him in the bath to make sure he didn't stick his ear under water. I think he got back to swimming fairly quickly and used swimming earplugs. By the time he went back for his post op check (6 weeks I think) the grommet had already come out and everything was healed. He saw the audiologists/ent consultant regularly for a couple more years but was signed off without needing further treatment.

My dd had glue ear issues for a couple of years before she was offered grommits at nearly 5.

She was scared but was ready to eat again within a couple of hours of coming out of theatre.

She had a personality change - the introvert, virtual selective mute dd disappeared and a confident little girl who started putting her hand up in class etc emerged They took a long while to grow out and she hasn't needed them to be redone again, presumably as the tubes are now at a better angle a drain away properly.

I had glue ear from the age of 4 to 11 I had three sets of grommets and each time they relived my hearing loss. My DD had glue from 4 months of age to 3.5years (long long story) she has had very severe hearing loss over this time, however, being careful to ensure she was looking at you when you were speaking it did not affect her verbal development. She had a bilateral myringotomy combined with unilateral mastoid surgery at 5 months of age and I would not have hesitated to have the grommets if the ENT consultant had thought it appropriate.
She is nearly 8 now she will never pass a school hearing test, lip reads really really well and as long as her teachers remember that she is hard of hearing manages really well at school so we have never gone down the hearing aid route.

go for grommets.

DS (6.5yrs) is on his 3rd set of grommets - I had terrible trouble getting anyone to listen to me over His glue ear, and 1st set were not inserted until he was 3.5 years. the lateness, and the severity of his glue ear means that it has affected his speech and therefore social development hugely. It has had huge effect at school, where with all the ambient noise he didn't hear a thing.

It is a very straight forward and easy op...the most distressing thing for me was him going under - that is awful.....but with an experienced ENT, it only takes 5 min.
The hearing aid option was never suggested, and seems odd.....TBH I am not sure how they work, so am unsure of the effectiveness - but that seems more extreme to me than grommets......
FYI - DS was deaf in his right ear and only had minimal hearing in his left, when he had them done the first time.

BTW - ear infections are so much easier to treat with grommets - you generally can just use ear drops...and they don't have anywhere near the pain.....I would argue, that ear infections are less common after grommets, there is not all the fluid for bacteria to grow in - DS is certainly far healthier with them (doesn't have continuous runny noses, sinus infections, unexplained fevers, anywhere like he used too)
The only pain is swimming - some ENT's say that you don't need to take any precautions, unless they are swimming 10 ft under, others say ear plugs, which are hard to get to stay in. Depends how much you swim....we lived in Dubai and DS literally swam every day, and I would still not hesitate to have grommets

My dd1 had grommets inserted at age 4 and 5. No problems each time, a little distressing the first time. Made an immediate improvement to her speech and haven't had any problems with ear infections.

my eldest dd (aged (14.5) last december had her 5th set of grommets and she also had a hearing aid from age 9 until 11. I would always vote for grommets cos of the whole isolation aspect. when she was very deaf her behaviour always deteriorated (understandably i think)

she chose her hearing aid in preference to further grommets but then started to get lots of ringing and noises in her ears so had to go back to grommet surgery

she has always lip read so i cant ever have any secrets