When you have your tonsils out, do you have less postnasal drip?

Dr.Amrita Basu(MBBS,MS)

5 years ago

When you have your tonsils out, do you have less postnasal drip?

When you get your tonsils removed, it’s a surgical procedure called a tonsillectomy.

The sticky drip you have from the back of your nose drips and sticks to the throat when you have a cold or flu. The posterior wall of the upper part of the food pipe is called the posterior pharyngeal wall and both this part and the tonsils can get infected due to the post nasal drip.

Postnasal drip occurs due to Sinusitis. The drip causes tonsils to get inflamed as well as the posterior pharyngeal wall. The infected drip can cause Tonsillitis with or without Pharyngitis. Just like sinusitis can be acute or chronic so also pharyngitis and tonsillitis.

Tonsillectomy will stop tonsillitis, but not the drip. There are also very specific guidelines before tonsillectomy is offered as a treatment option. Your Doctor will be taking detailed history before recommending it.

Postnasal drip: Home treatment is it possible?

In case you want to stop the postnasal drip, home treatment or a doctor’s visit will be needed, depending on the severity and duration of symptoms.

When it’s just starting you can start taking plain water steam inhalation and let the sticky cough come out. Start gargling either with betadine gargle or hypertonic saline to get rid of the foreign body sensation in the throat. If this doesn’t work you will need to visit a doctor and medications may be needed.

Sinusitis & Postnasal drip: The relationship

When nasal discharge builds up and you start snorting to stop it dripping from your nose anteriorly, a problem occurs.

This discharge starts dripping into the pharynx and gets stuck to the posterior wall. It can cause associated pharyngitis, tonsillitis, laryngitis and more.

Acute bacterial sinusitis, chronic bacterial sinusitis needs antibiotics, nasal wash, anti-histaminic with or without nasal sprays. Allergic rhinosinusitis treatment is however different.

The investigation will include Radiology and blood tests. A Computed Tomography helps us know about the number of sinuses involved, whether any mucosal polyps or any other cause for worry like deviated septum blockages due to any cause. This is important as often the success of medical management depends on the extent of disease and obstruction if any.

In the case of Chronic rhinosinusitis, if maximal medical treatment for three months fails to resolve the problem, surgical management like Functional endoscopic sinus surgery.

Blood tests will help us understand how severe the infection is whether associated anemia and deranged blood sugar are complicating the condition. Both can make treatment challenging and cause complications.

What is a bloody post nasal drip?

There are many potential complications of sinusitis like nasal bleeding, and I will explain more in further posts. But for this post its important for you to understand, that when nasal bleeding occurs, the blood can drip to the posterior part of your throat. This can occur even in those without sinusitis and needs to be thoroughly investigated.

Precaution from cold can help.

In case you have Allergic rhinosinusitis, you need to keep lifestyle precautions and medication both in mind.

This was a question I was asked on Quora and I thought I would share more about it.