Ear infections/ear tubes

[Hodge]

Our 18 month old has had almost constant ear infections for the last six months. He has been on all sorts of antibiotics, but nothing seems to permanently resolve the problem. We've seen an Ear/Nose/Throat doctor, and she has booked him to have ear tubes put in at the end of March. She also confirmed that the ear infections are causing some hearing impairment right now.

I'm just wondering if anyone could share their experiences with this - did the ear tubes help? Were you glad you had the surgery done for your child?

Thanks...

[CSK'sMom]

Two of our 3 kids had tubes inserted. Our oldest actually had 4 sets of tubes done. In his case he didn't have a single infection until he was almost 3 then they were non-stop. Even long term antibiotics didn't help. He even had a ruptured ear drum with one infection. We ended up doing 2 sets of tubes, then adnoids, then tonsils and adnoids rescraped and another 2 sets of tubes. His last set was done at age 11. He has permanent low frequency hearing loss in one ear now...

The actual surgery is pretty straight forward and recovery is quick. Aftercare is critical though. No water in the ears at all. Ear plugs of some sort in the bath, swimming, etc. Tubes can definitely help.

[ebizimage]

Wow, that sounds like a lot of treatments. My niece had frequent ear infections before, and her parents were thinking to put ear tube, but after she turned 3 years old, the ear infection problem went away. Maybe it's too early at 18 months. My son is having one now and he's 17 mo. He had a ruptured ear drum with the last ear infection. There's still fluid in his middle ear, but now we are watching and see coz the antibiotics didn't do well on him last time.

[gorf]

There is a relationship between allergies and ear infections. Triggers can be cats and smoke. Have you tried reducing allergy triggers in your home?

http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/ear...9/PAGE=EI00005

Anyways, yes, our son had tubes put in his ears. He started getting ear infections at 9 mths and we had tubes put in his ears at 1 1/2 yrs. Antibiotics didn't work very well at all to clear up the infections. The child was always unsettled, it was a tough time for all of us. The procedure itself was simple, much harder on the parents than on the child, he was running around as soon as he was able to get out of the crib in the hospital. As was mentioned above, you cannot get water into the ears so you have to be careful shampooing their hair.

The tubes were successful, they fell out on their own and we didn't need to have them removed and if in the same situation, I would do it agagin. Luckily no hearing loss.