So you’re watching this video because you want to find out about tonsil stones and if they’re making your breath smell. With the incoming holiday season, you want minty fresh breath and you want to know what your options are. And there are always options.
My name is Dr. JC Hodge. I’m an ear, nose, and throat specialist from South Australia. If you want more information about myself or the techniques that I use, you can go to my website which is over here www.doctorjchodge.com.au. If you like this video and find it useful, then subscribe to my channel. Push the notification button and that will give you updates and videos that I’m releasing. And make sure you give me the big thumbs up. That way YouTube will share this with other users that might find this useful.
So the best way to talk about tonsil stones is to show you a little picture. I wasn’t very good at art at school but essentially this is a mouth looking into it. This is the dangly bit called the uvula and these are the tonsils stones removal. You can see how I’ve drawn it. You’ve got this sort of little crypt here and that’s essentially where tonsil stones are formed. All that lining of the tonsil sheds off as skin does. This is called the mucosa. It’s the lining on the inside and essentially forms this bacterial mothership and people who have these will tell you they stink you know they’re bad occasional self-express now this one the outer tonsil and this one’s the inner tonsil and that’s important now you often don’t have one of each but that does give you some management options. So, the first thing you can do is ignore it. It’s entirely benign. It’ll just give you bad breath.
The second option is to self-express. You can use a common bud and you can sort of poke it out. Some people can do that. Some people have got a strong gag reflex so that won’t work. And then, there are traditional surgical options. There’s no medicine that’s going to fix this. No spray tablets and those sort of things. For this sort of tonsil or any tonsil tradition, you’ll take the tonsil out. That’s fairly brutal you know. The punishment’s got to fit the crime. You’ve got a bit of bad breath, two weeks off work, 10% bleed rate risk in adults, half of those have to go back to the hospital, and half those who go back to the theatre. It’s really painful and that’s because you can’t rest the throat so you need strong pain killers. They have come with a lot of side effects. If you have ankle surgery, you can put it up in an ice set but the problem with the throat is you’ve got to talk. You’ve got a hiccup. You’ve got to swallow. You’ve got to breathe so you constantly sort of poking a stick at this wound and it’s really quite unpleasant.
So the other option is to debug the tonsil operation. Now you can’t do that if you’ve got an innie because there’s nothing sticking out. This is all embedded into the muscle, into the pharynx, but over here we’ve got an anti. It’s a bit like belly buttons tonsils and what you can do here is you can just shave this off. I use a plasma device that disrupts molecules and dissolves tissues at very low temperatures. I’ve got a video on this for obstructive sleep apnea in children. It’s a very similar technique and what this does is basically get rid of all these little crypts so you can’t have any more stones. It’s much less painful. The recovery is quicker. You return to work after a few days and a few days of panadol. It’s a really good option. It also leaves behind functioning tonsil tissue and you need it because tonsil tissue helps you fight infection and we’re in the middle of a covid pandemic and we don’t really know the effect of removing adult tonsils are in this sort of current environment. So if you can leave it behind, you should try to.
For more information, go to my website again. It’s up here www.doctorjchodge.com.au. And if you’ve got any comments just write them down below and I’ll respond when I get a chance. If you found this useful, then make sure you share it. Thank you!