Enlarged tonsils

[Luckymummy22]

My DD never had tonsillitis as a young kid. It was her ears that were the problem area. But now she’s 6 she’s had tonsillitis twice in 6 months.
Dentist had told us a couple of months ago (when she was healthy) that she had enlarged tonsils.
I know twice is not a lot and apart from that she’s not been ill at all.
But just wondering what other people’s experience of tonsillitis is. Is it normal for tonsils to stay enlarged.
And also she’s not had a cold when she’s had it. Her brother has had a virus both times and it seems to go straight for her throat.
Really hoping it diesn’t become a regular occurrence as it’s horrible seeing her so poorly

My dd is the same and her tonsils are huge permanently. She’s had tonsillitis so many times and she’s the same age as yours. The doctor said she’ll just grow into them!
The tonsils affect her sleep when they’re really bad as it makes her snore and have sleep apnoea. But we saw a consultant who said they’re not going to take them out as they never do it any more due to its risks.
I’m just hoping it’ll get better as she gets older.
Hope this helps

Dd has her tonsils out just over a year ago, we didn't have any complications as such. She had recurrent tonsilitis, 5 times in 6 months and a number of times before then and she was very poorly each time with it.

When we visited the consultant he commented on her large tonsils, we have noticed a difference in lack of snoring since. While I'm happy dd had hers out, I wouldn't have done it had her cases of tonsilitis been so severe. We'd been to out of hours a number of times at the beginning as we were so concerned, very high temp, completely wiped out, sometimes vomiting. Plus dd was starting to miss a lot of school, I think that was the big point that helped make the consultant mind up.

I get a bit annoyed when Doctors say we don't take tonsils out anymore. I am a children's ENT surgeon and I still take a lot of tonsils out - some for sleep apnoea and some for infection. We take out less tonsils than we did in the 1960s and more recently some CCGs have imposed tight funding restrictions which means it is hard to get surgery on the NHS

There is always a balance between risk and benefit so we have to draw a line at which the symptoms become significant enough to draw the line and consider surgical treatment.

If you have 7 attacks of documented tonsillitis in one year, five attacks a year for two years or three attacks a year for three years then surgery is an option you should be able to consider. (this is derived from what are known as the SIGN guidelines)

If a child's airway is sufficiently compromised by swollen tonsils and adenoids that the quality of sleep is affected and they are tired during the daytime then it is also reasonable to consider surgical treatment.

It is important to remember that we don't just take tonsils out because they are big. Lots of children have big tonsils and no symptoms at all.

and luckymmummy in response to your original question - yes it is not unusual for the tonsils to remain enlarged for some time after a run of tonsillitis.

Op consider also her adenoids which you can’t see and which they can’t really tell how big they are apart from symptoms