At the beginning of the school year, children with adenoids are flocking to see doctors

Do you often breathe through your mouth, snore, have restless sleep, or even wake up from suffocation? Do you have a lot of nasal secretions, a heavy nasal voice, and unclear speech? Do you have a weird-looking face, uneven teeth, thick lips, and lack of expression? Do you often have dizziness and headaches, are hyperactive, and have difficulty concentrating... If your child has the above symptoms, he or she is likely to suffer from adenoids hypertrophy.

The reporter learned that recently, many young patients with adenoids hypertrophy came to the pediatric outpatient clinic of the Provincial Hospital of Traditional Chinese Medicine for treatment. So, what exactly is adenoids hypertrophy? How to treat it? Let's hear what the experts say.

What is adenoids hypertrophy?

Yuan Bin, director of the pediatric department and chief Chinese medicine physician of the Provincial Hospital of Traditional Chinese Medicine, introduced that adenoids, also called pharyngeal tonsils or adenoids, are pink lobed lymphoid tissue located on the posterior wall of the nasopharynx.

Moderate adenoid hyperplasia is to enhance local defense capabilities and better resist foreign viruses. However, if long-term and repeated inflammatory stimulation leads to pathological adenoid hyperplasia, it will affect adjacent organs and even the whole body, which is called adenoid hypertrophy.

The adenoids grow rapidly after birth. Under physiological conditions, they reach their largest size at 6 to 7 years old, begin to shrink at 10 years old, and reach their adult state at around 15 years old. Therefore, enlarged adenoids always occur in children.

Children need timely preventive treatment

Yuan Bin introduced that enlarged adenoids are generally accompanied by other complications: secretory otitis media or even suppurative otitis media may occur in the ears, with symptoms such as stuffy ears, ear pain, and hearing loss; rhinitis, sinusitis, nasal congestion, runny nose, blockage nasal sound, and snoring during sleep may occur in the nose; the throat and lower respiratory tract may include symptoms such as pharyngeal discomfort and coughing caused by secretions flowing down and irritating the respiratory mucosa, and may also cause bronchitis.

If children's adenoids hypertrophy is not promptly prevented and treated, its harm may accompany the child throughout his life. Yuan Bin said that long-term adenoids hypertrophy can affect the development of children's maxillofacial bones, leading to "adenoids face", which has a serious impact on the child's body and mind. It manifests as long-term mouth breathing leading to elongated maxilla, high arched palate, uneven teeth, protruding upper incisors, lack of expression, etc. Because adenoids hypertrophy causes nasal obstruction, children with adenoids hypertrophy are prone to respiratory infections. In severe cases, children will develop obstructive sleep apnea hypopnea syndrome, which manifests as apnea, which will cause children to grow slowly and have decreased memory, affecting their growth and intellectual development.

What should parents do?

Due to changes in the natural and social environment, the incidence of adenoid hypertrophy in children has increased year by year in recent years, which has seriously affected the growth and development of children and their quality of life, and also brought a lot of trouble to the family's daily life. Parents should discover it early, take their children to treatment early, and it is particularly important to choose the right treatment method.

Yuan Bin said that the current treatment of adenoids hypertrophy mainly includes surgical treatment, drug treatment and conservative treatment. Although surgical treatment is effective, there are risks such as intraoperative bleeding and postoperative recurrence, and the recurrence rate is about 25%; hormone treatment has the disadvantages of poor disease control and recurrence after drug withdrawal, and long-term use of hormone drugs also has many adverse reactions, such as nose bleeding; conservative treatment mainly pays attention to the nutrition of children, prevents colds, improves the body's immunity, and actively treats the primary disease.

Yuan Bin said that children with adenoids hypertrophy should pay attention to daily care, avoid contact with allergens, keep the environment clean, and use saline to clean the nasal cavity; children with adenoids hypertrophy are recommended to sleep in a side-lying position to keep the airway open; eat a light and nutritionally balanced diet, avoid spicy and irritating foods, and eat more foods that strengthen the spleen, resolve phlegm and disperse nodules, which are of certain help for adenoids hypertrophy, such as yam, water chestnuts, etc.

Traditional Chinese medicine has obvious advantages in treatment

Traditional Chinese medicine believes that the causes and mechanisms of adenoids hypertrophy in children are as follows: exogenous pathogenic factors, if they are affected by wind, warm and hot pathogens, which damage yin and consume qi, they can burn body fluids and turn them into phlegm; if they are affected by wind, cold and damp pathogens, they can easily induce phlegm and dampness; both can cause phlegm to accumulate in the nasopharynx, leading to adenoids hyperplasia and disease.

Internal injury causes, weak organs, lung deficiency, loose pores, especially susceptible to the six evil spirits and illness; spleen deficiency, spleen deficiency and phlegm rising up and blocking the nasopharynx, can also cause illness; there are also lung and spleen deficiency, external evil invades the body, evil toxins stay for a long time, qi and blood stasis, qi deficiency and blood stasis jointly cause illness; kidney deficiency, long-term illness leads to kidney yin deficiency, virtual fire rises, burning body fluid into phlegm, stagnating in the nasopharynx and causing illness.

Improper feeding and improper care will lead to weak spleen and stomach in children, and excessive consumption of fatty and greasy foods, which will cause the child to be overweight. Over time, this can cause moisture to accumulate and produce phlegm, which will accumulate in the nasopharynx.

Yuan Bin said that through Chinese medicine's diagnosis and treatment, following the principle of treating the symptoms in an emergency and the root cause in a chronic manner, and flexibly applying the methods of promoting blood circulation and removing blood stasis, detoxifying and dispersing nodules, and nourishing the lungs and spleen, the effectiveness of treating the disease can be significantly improved.

The latest evidence-based medicine also shows that compared with Western medicine hormone treatment, traditional Chinese medicine treatment can significantly improve children's snoring, mouth breathing, nasal congestion and other symptoms, and can significantly reduce hypertrophic adenoids, reduce surgery, and enhance the body's immune function with few side effects. Traditional Chinese medicine has a variety of methods to treat this disease. In addition to taking traditional Chinese medicine orally, there are also acupuncture, massage, acupoint application and other external treatments.

Correspondent Sun Qian, reporter Ji Kan