Do children with adenoid hypertrophy need surgery?

  I don’t know how many parents have asked me this question, but parents worry that their children are too young to undergo surgery, and some parents think that their children’s adenoids will gradually shrink with age, so they are unwilling to undergo surgery, but they don’t consider that while waiting for the adenoids to gradually shrink, their body’s growth and development are also affected. As a result, I often see that the best time for treatment is delayed due to parents’ lack of understanding.  My personal experience is that if adenoid hypertrophy affects breathing, snoring, open-mouth breathing, recurrent sinusitis or otitis media, and sometimes even apnea, surgery is needed as soon as possible, otherwise long-term sleep deprivation will affect the brain and body development. The long-term open-mouth breathing can also cause the maxilla and teeth to grow outwardly and deformed.  The adenoids can be removed with a minimally invasive cutting tip under direct observation of the nasal endoscope. In the past, the traditional surgical method advocated surgery at the age of 4, mainly because the child was too young and would easily choke into the airway by mistake if bleeding, but now the surgery is performed with a cutting tip under direct observation of the nasal endoscope, which is precise and less traumatic, The probability of recurrence is significantly reduced, so if a child has severe sleep obstruction symptoms, surgery should be performed promptly regardless of age.  General anesthesia is chosen for adenoids surgery in children to avoid the trauma caused by local anesthesia. Many parents believe that general anesthesia will affect the child’s intelligence, but there is no scientific basis for this.  This is due to edema and inflammatory reaction of the wound after surgery. It takes some time for the wound to heal, so the improvement of symptoms is a gradual process.  A lateral nasopharyngeal film can accurately evaluate the degree of hypertrophy of the sample. Some patients often ask whether to use plasma surgery, but my experience is that after the adenoids are removed with a cutting tip, it is still possible to use plasma to stop the bleeding, but nothing else can be said.