Ear tube insertion

If your child gets a lot of ear infections, he may need to have surgery. Let's talk about ear tube insertion.

So, why does my child need ear tube surgery?

Your child has been having ear infections, probably for a long time, and they either won't go away or they keep coming back. If your child doesn't have ear tube surgery, there's a chance he will lose some hearing or have other long-term ear problems.

Once a decision to have surgery has been made, it's good to know what happens during the surgery. Your child will be given general anesthesia. He'll be unconscious and unable to feel pain. The surgeon will make a small cut in your child's eardrum and remove any fluid behind it. Once the fluid is removed, the surgeon will place a small tube through the eardrum. The tube will allow air to flow inward. This keeps the pressure the same on both sides of the eardrum, while letting any fluid still behind the eardrum flow out.

Your child will probably go home the same day as surgery. He'll probably be fussy and groggy while the anesthesia wears off. On your way home, you may need to stop at the drug store to pick up antibiotic drops to use in your child's ears for the first few days after surgery.

The cut in your child's eardrum will heal on its own, and the tube will eventually fall out. Your child will be able to return to his normal activities shortly. But some doctors may recommend that your child use earplugs when he swims or bathes, to keep water out of his ears.

After a child has ear tube surgery, he will usually have fewer ear infections. And if he does have an ear infection, he will usually recover faster than he used to.

Ear tube insertion

BookmarkBookmark

Review Date: 1/1/2025

Reviewed By: Charles I. Schwartz, MD, FAAP, Clinical Assistant Professor of Pediatrics, Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, General Pediatrician at PennCare for Kids, Phoenixville, PA. Also reviewed by David C. Dugdale, MD, Medical Director, Brenda Conaway, Editorial Director, and the A.D.A.M. Editorial team.

The information provided herein should not be used during any medical emergency or for the diagnosis or treatment of any medical condition. A licensed medical professional should be consulted for diagnosis and treatment of any and all medical conditions. Links to other sites are provided for information only -- they do not constitute endorsements of those other sites. No warranty of any kind, either expressed or implied, is made as to the accuracy, reliability, timeliness, or correctness of any translations made by a third-party service of the information provided herein into any other language.

© 1997- A.D.A.M., a business unit of Ebix, Inc. Any duplication or distribution of the information contained herein is strictly prohibited.

All content on this site including text, images, graphics, audio, video, data, metadata, and compilations is protected by copyright and other intellectual property laws. You may view the content for personal, noncommercial use. Any other use requires prior written consent from Ebix. You may not copy, reproduce, distribute, transmit, display, publish, reverse-engineer, adapt, modify, store beyond ordinary browser caching, index, mine, scrape, or create derivative works from this content. You may not use automated tools to access or extract content, including to create embeddings, vectors, datasets, or indexes for retrieval systems. Use of any content for training, fine-tuning, calibrating, testing, evaluating, or improving AI systems of any kind is prohibited without express written consent. This includes large language models, machine learning models, neural networks, generative systems, retrieval-augmented systems, and any software that ingests content to produce outputs. Any unauthorized use of the content including AI-related use is a violation of our rights and may result in legal action, damages, and statutory penalties to the fullest extent permitted by law. Ebix reserves the right to enforce its rights through legal, technological, and contractual measures.

Animations

Browse All

Illustrations

Browse All

Presentations

Browse All