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 often 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, it happens once a month, sometimes even twice.
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Other:
Duration and frequency of the current illness: Usually, injections last for about a week.
Doctor's answer:
Children in the growth period may have larger tonsils, but as they age, the lymphoid tissue of the tonsils will gradually atrophy and return to normal. The tonsils are the defense gate of the respiratory tract and should not be removed easily. 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 tonsil surface, 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, unilateral tonsillectomy and adenoidectomy (tonsillectomy) can be considered.