Tonsillitis: what kind of symptoms that tonsil should be removed?
The term tonsils refer to the lymph nodes located on the sides of the neck wall. When we fully open the mouth, the tonsils are visible on the left and right sides of the neck wall.
It is generally believed that the tonsils are beneficial to the body. It serves to detain and destroy germs in the mouth.
Cause
Major causes of tonsillitis are bacterial infection, namely Streptococcus, and may be caused by some other types of bacteria as well.
Symptom
Patients with tonsillitis will have symptoms as follow:
Sore throat, fever, difficulty swallowing, headache, tiredness, and muscle fatigue.
In the case of a child, there may be vomiting as well. It will be found that the tonsils are swollen and red.
If it is properly treated at this stage, the disease will disappear within 4-5 days.
But if it is untreated, there will be severe inflammation and spread to the soft muscles around the tonsils. There will be an abscess around the tonsils, which has more severe symptoms than normal inflammation. Patients unable to open mouth, eat, have high fever, and dehydration.
It needs to be treated by surgical removal of pus and patient may need to be admitted to the hospital for intravenous medication.
People with frequent tonsillitis will show the big size of the tonsil glands. It leads to a chronic inflammation. The efficiency in destroying pathogens is reduced. The best treatment is tonsillectomy.
Don't let it be often. It can spread out.
In addition, when inflammation occurs frequently, pathogens will spread to other organs of the body causing inflammation of the middle ear (leading to otitis media), nephritis, heart valve leakage, which can be life-threatening.
Therefore, when you have sore throat caused by tonsillitis, you should see a doctor to get the right treatment and it should be considered case-by-case.
Tonsillectomy is nowadays easy to do, which only takes 1-2 days in the hospital.
People who should do the tonsillectomy are:
- The tonsils were found as chronic inflammation. It may lead to difficulty of breathing through the nose, difficulty of swallowing, and frequent ear infections, which is caused by a throat infection.
- People who have frequent tonsillitis, for example, in adults can have tonsillitis 3-4 times of a year, even if the tonsil size is not large.
- People who had an abscess around the tonsils.
- People who have difficulty breathing, loud snoring (OBSTRUCTIVE SLEEP APNEA), which is detected due to tonsil enlargement that blocks the airways.
- It was found that there was diphtheria in the throat all the time.
- It is an inflammation of other organs, which is suspected to be caused by inflammation of the tonsils, such as arthritis, nephritis, or heart valve leakage.
Advice for people who want to have tonsillectomy
People who want to have tonsillectomy will need to be examined by a doctor and cure an inflammation first. The doctor will make a decision about the tonsillectomy.
Otolaryngology and Larynx medical team at Vibhavadi Hospital
