[cheschire]

My daughter's adenoids were removed after their size caused her ear canals to remain closed, which was causing fluid buildup behind her ear and affecting her ability to hear clearly.

When a child cannot hear, they cannot learn important nuances to speech. Additionally, prolonged exposure to those fluids, if I understood the ENT doctor correctly, her hearing could have been permanently damaged had we left it. We were also taking intercontinental flights at the time and the closed canal could have caused a rupture, further limiting her hearing.

None of these things were associated with an ear infection. We only identified the adenoid issue because she was having trouble hearing and the ENT identified the large adenoids at that point. There was no pain associated with it, and I suspect many parents may not even realize that their kids have this issue.

What are the long term speech and hearing risks compared to the long term health risks?

I strongly caution anyone against a knee-jerk response to a study like this. It could be another anti-vaccination study all over again.

[headmelted]

Reading stories like yours does make me wonder if the bigger issue here is variance in standards of care.

Clearly you've been advised, based on your specific circumstances, of why it would be in your daughter's best interests to have this surgery done (there's no sarcasm here - it's great that so much consideration has gone into it and clearly it's been the right thing to do in your case).

It does seem like based on my own anecdotal experience, and from other comments in the thread, as if "tonsils out" is an automatically triggered decision in much of the world for certain ailments in cases where it may or may not be appropriate or warranted.

For the record, I hate even being anywhere near the fence on an issue like this, as I'm very much pro-vaccination (for example) and my position on this comes across as anti-science which I'm anything but.