Enlarged Adenoids Symptoms

Enlarged Adenoids: Introduction

Adenoids (pharyngeal tonsil) are lymph nodes (lymphatic tissue) located at the back of your nasal passage. They are somewhat similar to tonsils but situated at a higher location in the throat, behind your nose. Adenoids commonly can get enlarged during initial years of childhood, but the condition is mostly mild and often occurs temporarily.

In case there are repeated upper respiratory tract infections, the adenoids tend to get inflamed and enlarged and can cause health complications.

What are the Enlarged Adenoids Symptoms?

Because of their location, swollen and enlarged adenoids can in fact block your breathing passage. This can often make it difficult for the affected child to breathe through the nose due to blockage.

As a result, the child now breathes through the mouth. In the beginning, it is a problem faced only at night, but as the infection grows, the child will breathe through his mouth during the daytime too.

Continuously breathing through the mouth brings about another problem, as the mouth dries out, skin on the lips begin to crack. Allergies and infections can contribute towards enlargement of adenoids.

Enlarged adenoids signs and symptoms include:

• Mouth breathing
• Snoring
• Talking through the nose
• Dryness and/or soreness of throat (due to mouth breathing)
• Colored discharge from the nose (mucous)
• Health complications due to adenoid infection

Adenoids infection complications can include:

Adenoids are situated at the end of tubes that include part of middle ear and the throat. This can make infections to occur and spread to your ears (from the adenoids) causing middle ear infections. This can affect your hearing.

Enlarged adenoids symptoms include swelling that block and prevent mucous produced in your middle ear from draining. This sticky fluid (mucous) buildup can cause hearing loss that can be mild or severe.

Other symptoms of enlarged adenoids can be seen in the form of sinusitis when air fills cavities of your skull, gets infected, and cause severe headaches.

Signs of enlarged adenoids may show up as vomiting that occurs when the child swallows the pus (sticky fluid in the ear) during night when asleep. This can cause the child to vomit in the morning.