John’s Jottings

Our four year old got her ear tubes out yesterday. There they are threaded on to a paperclip. She got them about two years ago when it was clear she was having problems with her ears - infections and hearing that wasn’t quite right. Since she’s had the tubes we’ve had no problems with her ears, which has been great. Installing the ear tubes is serious surgery requiring general anesthesia. I felt so helpless when she was taken away behind those closed doors, and still more so later as she awoke groggy from the knock-out drugs. General anesthesia is not to be taken lightly - even routine surgeries like this one can develop complications due to the anesthesia.

Which is why we were pleased to learn that the removal of the tubes would not require a similar surgery, and could be performed during a normal doctor visit - five minutes and it was done. Two quick tugs with the thinnest tweezers you’ve ever seen and a little suction to clean up one ear and that was it. Our Ear Nose and Throat Doctor is really good with kids and he did a great job making sure Erin was calm and relaxed during the procedure. Afterward he gave her “five” and asked which hurt more - that or taking the tubes out. “The Five!” she said.

So what does that story have to do with the title of this article? Just this - while this simple procedure can be done risk-free in the doctor’s chair, at other hospitals general anesthesia is used unnecessarily. I am only familiar with one situation which is in Rochester, MN, but I suspect it’s the same within any big teaching hospital. According to my wife (a pharmacist who worked at this big teaching hospital that I’m not going to name, but which you probably can guess) that hospital has high rates of epidural, C-sections and routinely uses general anesthesia where it may not be needed, simply because of the need to train anesthesiologists, or I suppose, to allow more time for observation. I guess it’s hard to teach during a few minute procedure.

That’s not to say that it or any other big time teaching hospital are not great hospitals, in fact if we required the world’s leading Doctor of something we’d be there in a heartbeat, it’s just that you need to be careful for the more mundane procedures which could be made more complex solely for the educational experience.

I’ll let them practice on someone else.