I had my tonsils out when I was young but apparently these organs (whatever they are) no longer exist. I haven’t heard the word uttered for years. What happened to them?
What happened to your tonsils? I suspect they were incinerated with the rest of the incinerateable medical waste at your hospital.
My tonsils are in the “way-back” of my mouth, to each side and slightly behind my uvula, where they belong, as are most people’s. The once-common medical removal of tonsils for a few infections is no longer widely practiced, although repeated and severe infection might warrant removal.
Are they glandular tissue? Can you see them in the mouth of someone who still has them? Do the scrape them out or cut them out?
Mine were cut out with an electro-cautery (burns as it cuts to prevent bleeding) scalpel.
Once they’re removed, they’re generally gone for good, but my doc tells me that they can in relatively rare cases, grow back as they’re more like a lump of lymph tissue, rather than something with a particular structure like a heart or stomach.
Everybody still comes from the factory with a pair of them installed. Unless they become infected, they cause no problems, so it doesn’t make much sense to reflexively yank them out at any age.
Do you really think that just because yours were removed, kids are now born without them? Why do you think Jewish boys are still born with foreskin?
I think it’s clear that solkoe was being facetious.
The occurance of tonsillectomies has decreased dramatically over the past three decades. Used to be they’d whip those suckers out at the first sign of infection. Now, they only do it in severe cases, and better medical treatments for tonsillitis and adenoid hypertrophy are available.
umm, let’s not be too snarky please. I think the OP is referring to the fact that tonsils used to be a Big Thing, (about 30 years ago.) Everybody talked about them, and half the kids I knew went to the hospital to have them removed. But I agree with the OP:
My WAG is that the medical schools stopped emphasizing removal of the tonsils, and so it gradually became less common.
You can see them if you know what you’re looking for, but unless they’re infected, they just sort of blend in with the rest of the moist pink stuff back there to the untrained eye.
There are lots of methods of tonsil removal. The wikipedia page on tonsillectomies has a good list.
I do wonder, and this is a total WAG, if the increase in sleep apnea diagnoses in the last few years might have something to do with more of us old farts having our tonsils than our parents did by the time they were grown-ups. Tonsillectomy is one common treatment used in sleep apnea management. Or it could just be the Syndrome of the Day, and better diagnosed as a result.
I don’t think so. Most sleep apnea is due to excess prolapse of the back of the tongue onto the soft palate.
When surgery is done for sleep apnea, it usually involves removing the soft palate. Tonsils get yanked only if they are contributing to obstruction.
And in the couple hundred patients I’ve examined for complaints of sleep apnea, I really only recall less than a handful of times that the tonsils were significantly enlarged.
I am not an ENT, however.