Ear tube surgery pros & cons and Dr Wessman

I am sure this topic has been raised before so thanks in advance for possibly repeating your information. Our 14 month old has had 8+ ear infections in the last 10 months and we hate the amount of antibiotics she has had in her short life. We have been encouraged to get the tube surgery but of course we are terrified about putting her through the surgery. We have been told that the risks are minimal but would like to hear first hand experience. Also, has anyone had the surgery done by Dr Wessman at Children's Hospital? If so, please let us know your experience with him. Thanks so much! cautious mom & dad

That said, it is surgery and there are risks. Most of the risk comes from the general anesthesia. You can hear from me and other posters about instances where it went well, but in the end, no one can guarantee you that your child won't be the one who suffers an adverse reaction. So it is a risk and you have to decide if you're comfortable with that. Then again, losing hearing in one or both ears - especially during language development - is a risk, too.

We had our surgery at UCSF so I can't speak to your specific surgeon. However, I can say that our son experienced virtually no discomfort or suffering that I could tell. Truly, the hardest part was that he couldn't eat breakfast the morning of! He was soooo mad about that! (So try to schedule an early surgery if you can!) I went in the OR with him while they put him under (via mask), and my husband and I were both there when he woke up, groggy but not unhappy. (And not in pain.) I think we gave him Tylenol later in the day but that was about it. There was virtually NO ''recovery time.''

So, again, you have to weigh the surgical risks against the risks of repeated ear infections, but we are very happy with the choice we made. ear infections no more

We also were nervous about the procedure, but ended up having it done, at Lucille Packard. There are certainly risks with any procedure requiring general anesthetic, but, our procedure and recovery went very quickly and smoothly and he hasn't had a single ear infection since then, and the tubes fell out normally about a year later. We also had lots of pre- and post-procedure hearing tests to track his hearing loss (which went away eventually).

You can search the web, I believe there are some studies showing rarely long-term health problems tied to multiple ear infections in infants (other than hearing loss and related speech development delay, which is usually temporary). You have to make your own decision, but in our case after it was done we never doubted that it was the right thing. Good luck!

Oh, one last interesting thing, I also had ear tubes when I was a baby, so it seems that being prone to ear infections runs in our family. Matt

The most remarkable improvement was with her speech. Since she did not have to hear through the honey-like substance in her ears any more her enunciation improved and she became able to communicate clearly with everyone. Previously, her grandma, her babysitter and I could only clearly understand everything she said - we didn't recognize a speech impairment, rather thought that her dad and Grandpa were hard of hearing. :-) While her vocabulary has always been expansive, her speech was somewhat delayed but caught up completely by the age of 4 and a half, largely attributable to having the surgery. Please discuss the potential for long-term speech implications with her doctors.

I add that her dad had the same issue (small tubes) and experienced repeated ear problems as an adult until he did a similar procedure with Dr. Moyce as well. Tiny tubes run in the family. He, too, is pleased with the results. Glad We Opted for The Procedure

We started over with Dr. Drury. My daughter LOVED him from the minute he entered the room. He is smiley and pleasant and a competent surgeon. She had her tonsils, adenoids and tubes taken care all at once. It took forever to get the appointment but Children's Hospital was a fantastic facility. Our daughter finally breathes through her nose. She finally sleeps through the night. She has not had another sinus infection. She has a follow-up hearing test next month and I would guess that her hearing is no longer compromised. She is a completely different person. No doubt I would recommend you and anyone else who has noticed that their toddler is not sleeping well and suffering from ear, nose or throat problems take steps to help them feel better. We went from having a ''difficult'' child to a fun, happy, loving little girl. been there

Ear tubes and adenoidectomy for 19-month-old?

For the past 8 months, my 19-month-old son has had a perennial (on again, off again) stuffy nose, generally not connected with a cold. He's often so stuffy he can't nurse and breathe at the same time, and he snores a lot. He is speech delayed as well, so he got a hearing test, which he didn't do so well on. Today we saw a pediatric ENT (Dr. Gottschall at Kaiser) who said my son has fluid behind his eardrums, even though he has had no ear infections that we know of. He said my son's adenoids are probably enlarged as well, and recommended ear tubes and an adenoidectomy.

I've looked up past postings about ear tubes, but they all seem to be about children who have had a string of ear infections. I'd love to hear some advice from other parents whose children have had ear fluid in the absence of infections. Did you go with tubes, and if so, were they a good thing? What are the pros and cons? How big a procedure is it and how hard is the recovery from tube insertion and adenoidectomy?

I'd also love to hear about alternative therapies. I feel suspicious that there's an allergic component to my son's stuffy nose, since he was perfectly healthy until about 1 year and then got these problems just as solid foods started playing a larger role in his diet. Should I be trying an elimination approach to try to figure out if he has a food sensitivity? Are there other approaches that could be valuable? I'd like to get his stuffy nose and hearing problems resolved, especially as he's in such a sensitive period for language development, but I'm leery of poking holes in his poor little ears. Thanks!

The ear tubes definitely worked -- within days she'd stopped saying ''what?'' every time we told her something. Her teachers at preschool said they noticed a huge difference in how she interacted at school. It was totally worth it.

Then they fell out after just three months, which was really early. She'd had a bad cold and I think the congestion was enough to push them out. The fluid buildup began again and her hearing issues returned almost immediately. At that point her ENT said we should consider the adenoidectomy -- he told us that there wasn't any way to see for sure if her adenoids were enlarged until she was under anesthesia to replace her ear tubes. So we went ahead with the ear tubes and he found her adenoids were huge and went ahead with the adenoidectomy as well.

That was about 3 months ago and so far so good.

If you'd like to know any more about our experience, feel free to email me. Good luck with your decision! Keri

dairy dairy dairy! cut it out for a month. look carefully at ingredients of processed foods, as it hides as casein, whey, etc, soy, wheat and corn are other culprits. if you are nursing, you should eliminate it, too. supplement with vit A cod liver oil and vit C, mineral supplements to boost the immune system. for fats, olive oil and coconut oil are great. give him probiotics.

go to mothering.com, and check out their allergy forum: http://www.mothering.com/discussions/forumdisplay.php?f=307

good luck! signed: stuffy mama of mama of stuffy girls

Ear tubes for 4-year-old with hearing loss

Hi, My good friend has a 4 yr old son that has been having inner ear trouble/fluid/ear infections since he was 2. His hearing is so bad that when you speak to him he doesn't hear you. He is starting to lip read. His pediatrician sent him to an audiologist: no movement at all in right ear, very little in left. Ear tubes are recommended. She has heard pro and con for the tubes, but it seems like in his case, it is necessary. Have any of you gone through this, taken your child to a good ENT, successful surgeries, horror stories, etc? thanks for any info rachel

Ear sensitivity after having tubes put in

Our 4 year old son had tubes put in his ears last spring after a string of ear infections. Overall he seems to be doing fine. We used wax plugs for baths for the first month or so and then stopped. He did a lot of swimming over the summer without plugs and we never heard a complaint. Lately, when we are giving him a shower, he screams the moment we get his hair wet, complaining that we have hurt his ears. We are very careful about not spraying water directly in his ears, but he still gets very upset every night. We doubt that his ears are really hurting, but I was wondering if anyone else has had a similar experience with their child, and/or has some good ideas on how to deal with it. I am thinking that I will go back to the ear plugs for shower time just to keep him from screaming! Concerned Mommy

How long can ear tubes be left in?

Our 2 1/2 year-old daughter had ear tubes put in both ears a year and a half ago after having 8 ear infections in 6 months. My understanding is that typically, tubes fall out and the ear drum closes up on its own. We have been told that if they don't fall out, they need to be removed after two years. This is a surgical procedure. The risk in not removing them and leaving them in is that when they do eventually fall out, the ear drum would not heal itself and a surgery would need to be done to patch the ear drum.

Does anyone have more information about this? Could anyone share their experience with this matter? It seems to me that we either have a surgical procedure to have them removed with the risk that they would need to be reinserted if she begins chronic ear infections again. Or we leave them in and she may need a the patching surgery at a later time. I'm leaning towards leaving them in. Are there risks to this? I'd love any input people have. Thanks!

I went with 1. He used a long tweezer like thing, it was over in seconds, she cried and then she was fine.

Anyhow, to get back to your question, it's not a big deal to have them in there for a few years, so long as you're checking in with your pediatrician to make sure everything's okay; at least in our case waiting to have them removed meant a much easier removal in the end. I worried over this for the longest time and in the end, it was not a big deal that we waited. Kathy

However, you don't mention what your ENT recommends (or who he/ she is, for that matter). I would tend to follow this person's advice. Our ENT, Dr. Wesman, is extremely competent, and very conservative when it comes to surgery -- he has been spot on with his recommendations, and I would completely trust him. Karen

Recurring ear infectins - tubes?

Wondering about peoples current experiences dealing with reoccurring ( 3-4x per year) ear infections in toddlers. Thanks

Ear tubes for 2-year-old with hearing impairment?

It is looking like we might get ear tubes for my son. He's two, has had multiple ear infections, and currently has some hearing impairment due to fluid in his ears (the auditory nerve is fine), even though he hasn't had an ear infection for months. Although he is talking lots! -- including complete sentences -- his pronunciation is not great, and he very often mishears me, especially when I'm not talking and looking right at him (e.g. I say cook and he hears book). What have been people's good and bad experiences with ear tubes? Were they worth it, or did they create more problems than they solved? Karen

The surgery was really hard on us, her parents; probably not so much on her. Maybe I will sound oversensitive since the actual surgery was very brief. She was not allowed to eat for twelve hours before, and at that age she was still accustomed to nurse during the night. At the hospital in the morning, they put us in a room and the anesthesiologist gave her an oral sedative, which made her very sleepy and smiley. After it took effect, the anesthesiologist took her away wrapped in a blanket. They used gas to put her under, put the tubes in, and brought her out again in under ten minutes. She was already starting to wake up when they brought her out, so I think the anesthesia must have been quite light. However, she had monitors taped to her and a kind of a tube blowing oxygen under her nose, which was scary for me. Actually when they first brought me into the recovery room with her, they had told us that only one parent could come in, but I looked so bad that they went and got my partner. Our daughter perked up really quickly though, drank a bottle of sugar-water that they gave her, and we left in an hour or so. I think we gave her some Tylenol but there was no indication she was in any pain.

The tubes helped our daughter enormously. They did not stop her from getting ear infections, although she got a lot fewer. The main benefit was that her ears could drain. You would not believe what has drained out of our daughter's ears -- sticky yellow mucus, a couple of times blood, and once some stuff that looked like pea soup. The only thing grosser than seeing this stuff come out of the ears is thinking about it building up in there with no way to get out.

Because the ears can drain, the ear infections are really different. The kid starts acting really sick and miserable for a few hours as the pressure builds up, but there's nothing visibly wrong. Then the level of fluid gets high enough to start the draining, the pressure goes away, and the kid is running around again, happy as a clam, with some really disgusting goop coming out of her ears. It is such a relief to see her feel so much better so quickly, but it's kind of comical because she's oblivious to the stuff draining out that to an adult looks horrifying.

We always get the doctor to check the ears out when this happens, and they prescribe antibiotic ear drops. Once the ENT cleaned her ear out with a tiny suction device. One thing I wish we had followed up more on is that before we got the tubes, we were told that one advantage of getting them was the ability to treat ear infections topically rather than with systemic antibiotics. However, with the few ear infections she has gotten, the doctors have usually prescribed both antibiotic ear drops and systemic antibiotics. In retrospect I wonder if this is overkill but at the times we've been too concerned about the obviously yucky state of her ears to question whether the systemic antibiotics are necessary.

One of our daughter's tubes just fell out after being in there about two years; the other is still in as far as we know. She hasn't had an ear infection in at least a year. Back when she was still getting ear infections we stopped taking her in the swimming pool, but she is crazy about swimming now, we've made little effort to keep her ears dry, and she hasn't had any infections. We did not worry about her ears in the bath. There's no indication the tubes have affected her hearing adversely.

So, in sum, I would not do it lightly, but I would definitely do it again in my daughter's situation. In fact, since her ears were more or less blocked up from about 7 to 13 months, in retrospect we probably should have agreed to have it done sooner.

I hope this helps you with your decision. Teresa

We had absolutely no problems with the tubes. At her final checkup with the ENT the tubes had fallen out and the ears had healed completely with no scarring.

A couple things to consider first, our ENT told us that prolonged fluid that never drains can cause permanent scarring in the ear tubes. Second, hearing impairment due to fluid can also cause some kids a certain level of social isolation.

The tubes changed all of our lives. Huge fan of our ENT

Ear tubes for 1-year-old with "Severe Otitis"

My son, now one year old, has had fluid behind his ear drums for nearly two months now. We've been to a pediatric ENT (Wesman) who told us he had "Severe Otitis" and recommended antibiotics with possible tubes in the future. Our family doctor is willing to be patient and recommended an acupuncturist (who we are now seeing). My son definitely has some hearing loss, but is gaining a few words, so we feel we can afford to spend the time to wait and see if alternative methods work.
Question #1: if alternative methods are not successful, has anyone had success with antibiotics for this condition? It's not clear to me that an infection is the root of the problem. I'm not eager to have tubes put in, but I've heard so many stories about "multiple rounds of antibiotics" that I'm not eager to go through that if we'll end up getting tubes put inanyway.
Question #2: I'd also be interested in hearing about people's experience with tubes - how big a deal was it to have them put in, are they hard to care for once they are in, and did they make a difference?
Question #3: Has anyone had experience with Dr. Wesman (the pediatric ENT) they care to share? He would probably be the one to do the surgery if its needed.

 
http://www.icondata.com/health/pedbase/
http://www.med.jhu.edu/peds/neonatology/poi.html
http://search.info.nih.gov/

I learned the following by reading medical studies:

1. Prescribing decongestants for otitis, as Dr. Wesman did, has been 
shown by research to be ineffective. 
2. The tubes themselves tend to be effective, in statistical terms.
Although Dr. Wesman did not admit to any risks, there are some.
3. Removing tonsils is ineffective.
4. Removing adenoids sometimes helps, but only if the adenoids are 
inflamed.
5. I can no longer find the reference, but I saw a study on treatment 
of otitis using the non-sugar sweetener, xlylitol (sp?). The study 
divided a large group of children with otitis into 4 groups and 
treated them with 1) ordinary syrup, 2) ordinary chewing gum (I don't 
remember if it was sugar-sweetened or not), 3) syrup with xylitol, 
and 4) chewing gum with xylitol, and the study compared the results. 
Both the syrup with xylitol and the chewing gum with xylitol were 
each statistically effective -- that is, they helped in some cases. I 
think maybe as many as 40% of the cases. It also mentioned that 
xylitol was already known to be effective in reducing detal cavities. 
I went looking for gum sweetened with xylitol myself for my daughter, 
but I couldn't find any.

Tubes for 2-year-old with fluid in his ears?

My 2 year old son has been diagnosed with fluid in his ears as a result of an ear infection. We were told that he needs to get tubes in his ears as soon as possible. Has anyone had any experience with this? While I am open to getting tubes in his ears, I am also looking for information on alternative treatments, such as chiropractic and homeopathic methods. At this point, as soon as possible to the ENT our HMO referred us to means two months away. My little boy seems ok during the day, only pulling on his ears occasionally, but cries at night when he is lying down. Is there anything I can do for this? I gave him a big pillow to lie on so that his head is more vertical, but it doesn't seem to help. emily

3-year-old having tubes put in ears - swimming OK?

Worried about getting ear tubes

When considering ear tubes for our older child's chronic infections and hearing impairment, my wife and I were reluctant due to the need for anaesthesia. As a last resort we tried homeopathy at the Hahnemann Clinic -- over, I must say, my own grave doubsts and skepticism about its scientific basis (or lack thereof.) We say Christine, a nurse practitioner. My son was treated with a "constitutional" (you take it once or twice), and then with pulsatilla each time he showed symptoms of an ear infection. I was truly impressed by the results and have recommended homeopathy with a trained professional ever since (though by no means to the exclusion of traditional medicine.) On the first occasion we used the treatment my son's ear pain left after 12 hours, rather than the previous 2 or 3 days when on antibiotics. Each time we used pulsatilla after that, in response to earache/infection symptoms, it worked progressively more quickly, until he would go from screaming pain to fine in about an hour. Whatever you decide, I wish you and your child good health.

One of the first things I asked his pediatrician was whether allergies might be causing this, and she said it was highly unlikely. Eventually, my chiropractor persuaded me to do weekly elimination trials of common food allergens. As soon as we took wheat out of his diet, his constantly runny nose cleared up. We stopped the antibiotics a few days later, and he did not have another ear infection for 18 months, and has had them rarely ever since (and not for at least 6 years now; he's 12). I think he had a mild wheat allergy, and some kind of congenital narrowing of the ear drainage.

It's worth noting that it took his doctor a year or so to acknowledge that the change in diet may have helped. However, when I took a child development class, I read in my text that allergies are the most common cause of chronic ear infections in children.