Doctor has recommended my 2 year old son to get his adnoids removed. He was only supposed to get a grommet (to remove fluid from ear).

Has anyone had this done and has it improved your way of life?

I'm a bit concerned putting my Son through the adenoid surgery since it came from left field when it was just supposed to be about the fluid in his ear.

I would personally get a 2nd opinion regardless of extra cost. Surgery is risky and possibly unnecessary?

Seriously, second medical opinion.

(On a side-note I thought this was about removing Android from a phone)

yeh so did I!

get a second opinion - look for a specialist in child ear problems

Adenoids are basically lymphoid tissue located right at the back of the nose (a place called the nasopharynx). When you get an infection they swell up and can block the tube that connects your middle ear with the back of the nose (the auditory/eustachian tube). Blockage of this can lead to middle ear infections - which is what your kid has if he's getting grommets to drain the fluid build up in the middle ear.

So removal of the adenoids could help with recurrent middle ear infections - theoretically. There's alot of debate going on as to whether this actually helps, and as to whether grommets actually help for that matter.

Get a second opinion - I'm only a first year med student. But that's the nuts and bolts of it.

I should have mentioned, I had mine out when I was a kid to help with breathing through my nose. It didn't help - I snore like a champ!

I had mine done when I was a little tacker.... had grommets n s*** too.

no idea if it helped or hurt or anything as I was too young .. I can barely remember s*** from last week let alone 30 years ago.

Pretty much all the same for me, except I didn't have grommets. No idea if it did anything because it's not like I can compare before and after.

is this the recommendation of a GP or an ENT specialist? If you haven't seen an ENT, do so.

I had an ex-gf who had them removed to help with allergies. If it worked, it would have only been a mild reduction in allergies because she still suffered pretty badly after they were removed.

If you're hesitant, you should definitely seek a second or even third medical opinion. Make sure you're not just waiting to find a doctor to tell you that you don't need it done, though. Listen to why the doc's are saying that you should or shouldn't get it done, what the possible positives are, what the possible negatives are.

I would have thought that if the surgery was not risky and had very few potentially bad long term outcomes then you should do it - kids are resilient as f***, and as painful as it will be in the short term, it's better to do it while they're young compared to when they're older.

Unfortunately medical science isn't an exact science.

My son had grommits when he was 2, kept getting ear infections. Grommits fell out within 3 weeks and he kept getting infections, we moved back up to Brissy a few months later and he hasn't had an infection since. Warmer climate must have helped.

My oldest daughter was recommended to have her adenoids removed because of potential sleep apnia, we've been monitoring her at night and it seems to have settled but eventually we'll have to get it done I'm sure. These days they tend to laser them out, its not that serious an operation (although it is your child so any medical treatment is always serious).

Definitely get a second opinion if you're not comfortable with the diagnosis, but generally these days they do far less tonsil/adenoid removal than they did back in the 70s/80s as the antibiotics etc are much better at clearing infections, so if they are recommending it then the problem may need a better solution than meds alone.

Also keep in mind that the negative stories that you hear might be over-representative of the the bad outcomes - people will probably be more likely to remember the stories where things have gone wrong compared to instances where people say, "Yeh I had it done and it was fine." It's difficult to know how many good/neutral outcomes there are because people might be less inclined to remember them or report them (by default we're primed to be weary of bad things). This is why you have to rely on the medical professionals to have a more balanced account of possible outcomes. Obviously doctors are prone to human error and bias too, which is why 2nd and 3rd opinions are a good idea.

Who was the ENT?

Who was the ENT?

@OP: i'd pm this info if you really feel like sharing.