If adenoid hypertrophy interferes with breathing, aggressive intervention should be considered, including medication and surgery. There are some mild cases that require little or no treatment.
The adenoids, also known as proliferators, are a lymphatic tissue in the nasopharynx. The enlargement of the adenoids in children is often physiological. It usually reaches its maximum size at the age of 6 years and gradually degenerates thereafter. If the degree of adenoidal hypertrophy is too great and cannot atrophy on its own, affecting the general health or adjacent organs, then it is called adenoidal hypertrophy. In general, adenoid hypertrophy may cause snoring and breath-holding during sleep or affect the recovery of rhinitis and allergic rhinitis in children. If children have snoring or even apnea during sleep for a long time, it may affect their growth, intellectual development and facial development, which may lead to poor mental health, memory loss and small jaw deformity.
Adenoid hypertrophy should be divided into different treatment methods. If the child’s adenoids are too enlarged, resulting in long-term breathing problems, or even suffocating awake, and heavy allergic rhinitis symptoms, which are not easily controlled, such a situation requires surgery. The surgery usually involves removing the adenoids under general anesthesia using a nasal endoscope to improve ventilation in the nasopharynx, which can improve symptoms. If the child only has short-term breathlessness and open-mouth snoring during the cold, and the symptoms can be reduced after the inflammation is controlled, conservative treatment can be considered, and long-term nasal glucocorticoid spray and oral montelukast are generally recommended. If, after conservative treatment, the symptoms still cannot be relieved or even aggravated when the child has no obvious cold, surgical treatment is required.
Therefore, adenoid hypertrophy requires a treatment plan based on the child’s symptoms, and generally requires weighing the pros and cons and taking a reasonable treatment approach.