Common Problems in Children

Hi, I’m Dr. Shashidhar. I’m a pediatric ENT consultant and I work with a hospital called Artemis in Gurgaon. I’m going to talk about the common problems in children which is cold and why it comes again and again?  What is the solution for it?

It’s a very common problem nowadays with children going to day schools and play schools. At an early age and a lot of times, we’ve been told that this is because of the pollution or the allergies or infection from the surroundings but quite often we miss a very common cause of the cold which is what we call as Adenoids.

What are Adenoids?

Adenoids are small lymphoid tissue, the tissue that makes white blood cells in the body behind the back of the nodes. They are normal in children but sometimes they grow up in size. Like what you see here, like if this is the size of the adenoids, which should be there, is marked in violet, sometimes they grow, the bigger circle here the yellow in the back of the nose and block the nose. When this happens the common symptoms in children are snoring, breathing from mouth, restless sleep where the child is constantly turning this side and that side trying to get a good position in which he can breathe, some drooling and some coughing in the night.
More often than not we tend to miss Adenoids because we can’t see them directly and we tend to treat these conditions in terms of allergies, bronchitis and put the child in to nebulization and in unnecessary treatments.

What I’ve found in my own experience, that lot of the kids who have been told they have allergies and they have been told they have bronchitis have actually had Adenoids. So, if your child has reoccurring problems of sore throat, breathing difficulties and nose blocks, it’s worth getting evaluated for adenoids because the treatment of adenoids is very simple and often very gratifying. Which can be done with simple nasal sprays, saline washes and if it is a severer one it needs a surgical intervention to open up the nose.

Adenoids also cause recurrent ear infection, ear pain and sometimes they cause hearing disorder in children. It is quite difficult to evaluate such problem in children. You can only perceive it as, sometimes when you call them they don’t respond, their grades are falling in school and when they watch television they tend to raise the volume of the noise and this helps us to pick up the child to scream for the hearing problems because when you have adenoids you have a higher chance of getting ear infection and fluid inside the ear which is called otitis media, which can also be treated in the same lines. Rarely we need to put some grommets or some surgical intervention to drain the fluid out if we are not able to treat it medically.

Third problem which I wanted to discuss is Allergies in children. Aallergies in children can present in very wide spectrum. Sometimes they present only as cough, sometimes children get rashes on their skin, sometimes they can have allergies to food and recurrent diarrhea and other problems. So, allergies in children can be treated quite effetely with medicines and we have what we call as Immunotherapy to detect what the child is allergic to so we can specifically target that antigen and cure them for the long term. This now is the most gratifying and the latest treatment in allergies called Sublingual Immunotherapy.

With all these new, exciting treatments and if your child is not getting benefited by cold and cough routine treatment, you’re free to contact me at 3 Senses ENT Clinic which is in South City 2, Arcadia, Gurgaon. I’m also available at Artemis Hospitals throughout the week except on Sundays.

Thank you so much for your time.