Adenoid

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Adenoid
Image:Gray994-adenoid.png
Location of the adenoid
MeSH	Adenoids
Dorlands/Elsevier	t_13/12812454

Adenoids (or pharyngeal tonsils, or nasopharyngeal tonsils) are a mass of lymphoid tissue situated at the very back of the nose, in the roof of the nasopharynx, where the nose blends into the mouth.

Normally, in children, they make a soft mound in the roof and posterior wall of the nasopharynx, just above and behind the uvula.

Contents 1 Function 2 Pathology 3 Removal of the adenoids 4 Histology 5 Cultural significance 6 See also 7 References 8 External links

Function

Adenoids are part of the immune system. Like all lymphoid tissue, they trap infectious agents like viruses and bacteria, and they produce antibodies.

Since the adenoids are located at the back of the nasal airway, they provide defense against inhaled substances.

This function decreases with age as the adenoids shrink. Because adenoids do ordinarily shrink by late childhood, the problems caused by enlarged adenoids rarely occur in adults.

Pathology

Enlarged adenoids, or adenoid hypertrophy, can become nearly the size of a ping pong ball and completely block airflow through the nasal passages.

Even if enlarged adenoids are not substantial enough to physically block the back of the nose, they can obstruct airflow enough so that breathing through the nose requires an uncomfortable amount of work, and inhalation occurs instead through an open mouth.

Adenoids can also obstruct the nasal airway enough to affect the voice without actually stopping nasal airflow altogether.

Removal of the adenoids

Surgical removal of the adenoids is a procedure called adenoidectomy.

Carried out through the mouth under a general anaesthetic, adenoidectomy involves the adenoids being curetted, cauterised, lasered, or otherwise ablated.

Histology

Adenoids, unlike other types of tonsils, have pseudostratified columnar epithelium.^[1]

They also differ from the other tonsil types by lacking crypts.

Cultural significance

• "Adenoid Hynkel" is the dictator of Tomania in Charles Chaplin's The Great Dictator.
• There is an entertaining passage about a giant adenoid, "At least as big as St. Paul's, and growing hour by hour", in Thomas Pynchon's novel Gravity's Rainbow.

See also

• adenoidectomy
• lymphatic system
• pharynx
• tonsil

References

1. ^ Histology at KUMC lymphoid-lymph06

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