Think Twice Before Removing Those Tonsils in Your Child

The essence of removing tonsils during childhood is to ensure that your child does not experience breathing problems and that you also get rid of chronic earaches.

However, doing that may potentially get them in even bigger problems with the likelihood of developing respiratory infections.

According to a study led by Sean Byars, you expose your child to “long-term risks of disease, especially respiratory and allergic infections, for as long as 30 years once the child undergoes a surgery to remove tonsils.”

Some of the respiratory likely to occur include pneumonia and asthma.

As a result of the new findings with respect to long-term illnesses, it is crucial that you first consider all factors before making the important step of having your child’s tonsils and adenoids removed.

Byars said that the main point in their study is “At times you have to choose between removing the tonsils and preserving your child’s long-term health.”

He is a research fellow in Australia at the University of Melbourne.

How the Study was done

To conduct the study, the researchers obtained more than 60,000 Danish health records of children whose tonsils had been removed, adenoids removed or both before reaching 10 years old. A comparison was made between these medical records and 1.2 million other records for peers born between 1979 and 1999.

An area of interest for the scientists was what the surgeries intended to treat in which case they found mixed results.

For instance, the removal of tonsils and adenoids greatly benefited sleep disorders and tonsillitis but conditions like sinusitis picked up, going on until 30 years old.

The upper respiratory tract diseases were also found to increase by 2 to 3 times once adenoids or tonsils had been removed. Furthermore, there was evidence in the increase in the risk of infectious and allergic diseases.

The Bigger Picture

Byars explained that this study shed more light on the bigger picture unlike in the past when most studies only concentrated on the short-term benefits of removing tonsils.

Tonsils are two round lumps in the back of the throat. Adenoids are high in the throat behind the nose and the roof of the mouth.

Adenoids and tonsils are important parts of the immune and typically get removed during childhood to treat an obstructed breathing and chronic ear infections. Interestingly, these are normally removed at a time when the immune system is at its crucial stages of development.

As much as the study authors urge you to be cautious prior to scheduling a surgery, they also advise that avoiding the operations may not be feasible when you are facing chronic or recurrent conditions.

“At times children with some of these conditions may also have respiratory complications not because of the surgery but as a result of the very condition that triggered the surgery in the first place,” explained Dr. Michael Grosso.

Just like Byars, Grosso is of the opinion that careful analysis ought to be made before operating.