Private ENT referral do 8 year old halitosis

[ElPulguilla]

I need advice on how best to obtain a private ENT referral for my 8 year old daughter, who has fairly horrendous halitosis which is starting to really impact her confidence and cause anxiety around losing friends at school.

I’ve taken her to the GP who gave generic, basic advice and stated nothing was wrong. Ditto the dentist. She has hypo mineralisation of the enamel but this smell is categorically not coming from her teeth - it’s the back of her throat for sure (found out the hard way when trying to depress her tongue to view the tonsils, the clean pen I used stank to high heaven).

I’m massively concerned this will decimate her already shaky confidence and impact her friendships at a pretty crucial time in her pre-teen development. It’s already caused friends to exclude her.

We do all the right things re dental hygiene and nebr skip brushing with an electric toothbrush. Frustratingly I know the GP won’t refer to ENT as she’s only had one episode of tonsillitis her entire life, and is extremely heathy with no hearing or allergy issues.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated - I can’t bear the thought of her going through this in her critical teenage years and not being able to fix it.

If you’re going private and paying yourself, you don’t need a referral, you just find a private ENT and book in.

If you have private health insurance which requires a referral from a GP, I’ve found GPs are happy to give a referral if you make it clear it’s for private.

If you’re in or can get to London I recommend Ent4kids. We saw Mr Daya there. Also heard good things re Daniel Tweedie.

Does she snore?

Hi thanks so much for responding.

No she’s never snored and has never until last month has an episode of tonsillitis. There have never been any ENT concerns at all and the halitosis only became apparent when she turned 6 I think. Otherwise she’s very healthy and is very rarely ill. Sleeps like a log, eats fairly well.

The smell is definitely worse when she has a cold which makes me think it’s tonsils/adenoids. I had tonsil stones as a young adult and had a private tonsillectomy under Bupa when I was 21. It wasn’t great, really painful, but I’ve never looked back.

Unfortunately we don’t have private health insurance so it’s either begging the GP to complete an NHS referral which isn’t going to happen, or getting a loan for private care. I’ll look into ENT4kids (we are midlands-based).

Could it be tonsil stones? They can be tiny or deep so hard to see but smell amazingly bad

Yep I suspect so as I had the same, as did another member of my family so it’s probably hereditary. When she had the tonsillitis a few weeks back her breath was so foul you could smell it from 2-3 metres away. It’s bad all the time anyway, but seems worse with any viral respiratory infection where she was a runny nose and cough. I just don’t have the stomach for the fight trying to get her seen on the NHS when the criteria for referral are so strict now. Poor kid can’t carry on as she is.