Video Blog: What to Expect After Ear Tube Surgery

Okay so today’s video is on what to expect after ear tube placement.  So most of the time if I’m placing ear tubes it’s in young children and usually the reason is for recurrent ear infections or chronic fluid behind the eardrum. For young children we do this procedure with them   asleep under anesthesia. On the day of the surgery, after having the procedure, you know your child will probably be kind of groggy and not their usual self for the rest of the day. Usually by the next day they’re mostly back to normal again.

Fortunately ear tube placement is not a real painful procedure. There may be a little bit of discomfort in the ears afterwards but it’s usually nothing terrible, so usually I just recommend Tylenol or motrin or whatever you typically give for ear aches. A normal and expected finding after ear tube placement would be drainage coming out of the ears. This is totally expected because the reason the tubes are put in is because there’s fluid back behind the eardrum that’s trapped.  I do clean all that fluid out during the procedure but sometimes if it’s infected and it’s inflamed the ears may drain out through the tubes for a day or even a few days afterwards. So you may notice the yellow drainage coming out, and sometimes there’s even bleeding coming out of the ears afterwards. That’s all totally fine and expected.

I will give you on the day of the surgery a little bottle of ear drops to use that you’ll put into your child’s ears normally for about three days after the surgery but sometimes I’ll instruct you to use it longer depending on what things look like in the ears.

Other things to be aware of- it’s not unusual that your child may have a fever off and on for 48 to 72 hours after the ear tubes are placed. The reason for this is really just a reaction of the body to  having surgery and basically getting messed with. Your body or your child’s body a lot of times produce a fever just in response to all the stress of having surgery, and this is OK. You can give Tylenol or ibuprofen to treat the fever and usually it goes away within two to three days. If it’s lasting longer than that you should contact my office to find out further instruction.

So that’s really it in terms of ear tubes for children.

For adults, we put in the tubes in the office so there’s not the problems with anesthesia. Similar to children,  adults may also see drainage and bleeding from the ears after the the procedure temporarily.

So that’s a general idea of what to expect after ear tube placement and you know you can certainly give me a call if you have further questions or if you’re one of my patients.