Patient's question:
Medical history: My child is 6 years old. Due to swollen tonsils, it seems like catching a cold no matter how careful I am. He frequently gets colds, fever, cough, and sometimes it triggers pneumonia. What should I do? I heard that having surgery to remove the tonsils is not good for the child. Now, I don't know what to do.Previous diagnoses, treatments, and outcomes:
Most of the time, the treatment starts with medication, but it's generally ineffective. The child's tonsils don't go down at all, and they need injections and medication to reduce inflammation to get better. On average, this happens once a month, sometimes even twice.
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Duration and onset of the current illness: Usually, the injections last for about a week.
Doctor's answer:
Children in their growth phase may have larger tonsils, but as they age, the lymphoid tissue of the tonsils gradually atrophies and returns to normal. The tonsils are the defense gate of the respiratory tract and should not be removed lightly. If a child's tonsils swell repeatedly, with high fever reaching 39–40°C, accompanied by headache, joint pain, neck pain, purulent yellow discharge on the surface of the tonsils, and concurrent conditions such as otitis media, sinusitis, pneumonia, or rheumatic fever, the tonsils have become a focus of infection, and surgical removal may need to be seriously considered.First, consult a doctor at a large hospital in detail, and then handle the situation based on specific circumstances. Originally, the surgery could be done in the outpatient department, but since the child is young and may not cooperate, hospitalization may be necessary. The surgery requires general anesthesia, and generally, there will be no major issues. If the tonsils have not completely obstructed the respiratory tract, removal of one tonsil and the adenoids (tonsillar tissue) may be considered.