Grommits - any experiences

[mamaberta]

DD has been diagnosed with mild conductive hearing loss and we have been referred to ENT at the local children's hospital. Other parents have told me they will recommend grommits and some have said they aren't much cop. From what I understand, they drain fluid from the ears but they tend to get blocked up anyway.

Poor DD has a lot of problems with her ears and perforating her eardrum to insert a drain just sounds awful. I'd do it if I really thought it would help but don't want to put her through it unnecessarily. She has had lots of nasty ear infections (brought on, I think, by maternity hospital bullying me into giving her formula in first few days and making me chuck my colustrum)

I'd be really grateful for other's experiences and thoughts.

hi, my little boy had a constantly perforating eardrum due to infections and ended up with grommets. generally hospitals prefer not to fit grommets unless essential, becuase there is a risk that bacteria will colonise the grommet and there may not be much improvement. However, my boy had augmentin to clear a couple of infections before the grommets were fitted, so his ears were clean when they were done. He was 18 months old. It was absolutely fab - he has been a different boy in the last 18 months, and has had no infections since. He still has some glue ear, but his eardrum is being aerated and htey are happy it is not getting reinfected. I would just take the advice of your consultant. They prefer to try drops to get rid of infection, and hearing aids next, with grommets as a last resort, but it worked for us!

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dd1 has glue ear and has had a set of grommets fitted but the fell out after 8 months and all symptoms returned
she is on the waiting list to have them again

As soon as she had them all infections stopped and hearing was returned to nomal after precioulsy being really bad

Our DD#1 has them - put in 15 months ago and still in place at the moment though we do not expect them to last much longer as we were told the average is about 10 months. She had them put in due to glue ear causing hearing loss and yes they made a very real difference to her. We have had no complications from them and I would not hesitate to have them replaced if they need to be done again once the first set come out - though I hope of course that will not be necessary. She was 2y8mth when she had them put in and has quite a speech problem too, part of which is attributed to her hearing though other issues with this too.