Purulent plugs in the throat occur, as a rule, against a sore throat. These pathological processes are manifested by painful sensations and some other signs of an infectious process in the throat. With the aggravation of this pathology, difficulties may occur when swallowing. In complicated cases, surgical intervention in the form of removal of the tonsils is required.
There are purulent plugs in the throat without temperature, but most often it is raised to 38-39 degrees.
At the initial stages of the development of the pathological process, you can deal with the occurrence of traffic jams on your own. For this, various medications are used: antibacterial, immunostimulating, antiseptic, as well as all kinds of rinses, inhalations, irrigation with folk remedies. Purulent plugs in the throat are removed at home with cotton swabs or rinses.
Causes of tonsil plugs
Traffic jams in the throat are formed, as a rule, against the background of inflammation of the tonsils of a chronic nature, which can be caused by various infectious pathogens. In addition, there are some other factors, which include:
- Chronic otolaryngological inflammatory pathologies. For example, with sinusitis (inflammation of the sinuses), part of the pathological bacteria enters the nasopharynx and begins to accumulate and multiply in the tonsils.
- Inadequate oral hygiene. The number of harmless microorganisms that make up the normal microflora of the pharyngeal mucosa begins to decrease gradually due to the multiplication of pathogenic microbes, which can be activated at any moment and provoke the development of the inflammatory process. The defeat of the tonsils also occurs due to the microparticles of food remaining in the mouth, which penetrate the gaps of the glands, suppurate and form plugs.
- Weakening of the immune defense when protective blood cells are not produced in the body in sufficient quantities to defeat infection pathogens.
- Poor nutrition. For example, when consuming a monotonous carbohydrate or protein food, deficiency of certain vitamins (C and group B), the body weakens, which cannot fully carry out protective actions against pathological processes.
- Trauma to the tonsils. With various injuries of the mucous membrane of the pharynx, inflammatory foci can form, through which infections penetrate the body and, in particular, into the tissue of the tonsils, the formation of caseous plugs occurs over time.
Psychosomatics
The appearance of purulent plugs in the throat (photo presented) may not be preceded by any infectious, fungal or viral diseases.
In such situations, psychosomatics determines the main reason for such a pathological process, when, due to the unstable emotional state of a person, special hormones responsible for maintaining immunity cease to be produced in the body.
Symptoms of the disease
Even with relatively small sizes of such purulent formations, the patient shows the appearance of severe discomfort and pain.
The purulent plugs in the throat are indicated, as a rule, by the following symptoms:
- Sensation in the throat of a foreign object. Traffic jams, which are localized in the thickness of the tonsils, are able to act on the nerve endings in the mucous membrane of the throat. As a result of this effect, the signal about the presence of a foreign body in the larynx is given to the brain. Unpleasant sensations can be observed only on one side, and in some cases on both, which directly depends on the area of the throat. In certain situations, a lump in the throat may be accompanied by a painful dry cough.
- Pain during swallowing. In the focus of the inflammatory process, biological substances begin to stand out, which increase the sensitivity of nerve fibers, and the body perceives this as a pain sensation. As a result of this process during swallowing, pain and a feeling of narrowing of the larynx may occur. In rare cases, purulent plugs reach very large sizes and become an obstacle to the passage of food through the throat. With prolonged and progressive inflammatory processes, hypertrophy of the tonsils develops, which implies an increase in their size, which significantly complicates the swallowing processes.
- Characteristic bad breath. Purulent plugs contain bacteria, pathogenic fungi and other harmful microorganisms inside, some of which in the process of their life emit hydrogen sulfide, which has a specific smell. The situation is exacerbated by the fact that the use of a variety of oral refreshments and methods of hygiene does not weaken bad breath.
- The presence of visual formations on the tonsils. Even with a simple examination in the mirror, the patient can detect purulent plugs in the throat. They, as a rule, can be of various sizes - from a few millimeters to a centimeter, shades of white, gray, yellowish. In certain cases, they are detected by pressing with your fingers on the anterior palatine arch or tonsils.
How to get rid of purulent plugs in the throat?
Drug therapy
Given the fact that caseous plugs on the glands are an acute purulent process, the most effective method of dealing with them is antibacterial therapy. However, not every pharmacological drug in this category is suitable for this. To select the appropriate medication, appropriate diagnosis is required, based on the results of which a specific type of antibiotic is determined. Most often, with the formation of purulent plugs in the throat and temperature, preparations of a wide spectrum of exposure are prescribed, which are able to infect a large group of pathological microorganisms.
Preparations
You can use such medications as Azithromycin or Ceftriaxone. The minimum therapeutic course for this pathology should be at least ten days. If the treatment is incomplete, and so often happens with an initial improvement, there is a risk of relapse of the disease, since the infectious agents are not completely destroyed. And in some cases, they develop resistance to a specific group of antibacterial drugs. Before using antibiotics, you should consult an ENT specialist, as these drugs have a list of contraindications and can provoke serious adverse reactions.
Purulent plugs in the throat sometimes develop against the background of a whole complex of disorders in the body, therefore, methods of dealing with them should be complex. During treatment, it is recommended to use immunomodulatory drugs and vitamin complexes.
Antiseptic and anti-inflammatory drugs
Antiseptic and anti-inflammatory drugs of both systemic and local use have a good effect in this disease. They quickly remove the symptoms of pathology and have a pronounced wound healing effect. The following drugs are included in their list:
- "Immudon";
- essential oil of fir;
- "Proposol";
- "Rotokan";
- Hexoral;
- Yoks;
- Iodinol.
Alternative methods of treatment
How to get rid of purulent plugs in the throat by folk methods?
These formations on the glands can be treated independently at home, using some of the traditional medicine tools and methods. This group can include all kinds of gargling, irrigation and inhalation.
The use of herbal medicine also reduces the intensity of the inflammatory and purulent process. After a course of therapy with folk remedies, caseous formations can be removed at home using simple methods.
How to treat purulent plugs in the throat of a child?
Rinse
This method of treating congestion in the throat is one of the most effective. The procedure allows you to wash purulent plaque from the tonsils, and purulent formations gradually disappear on their own.
To prepare rinse solutions, you can try the following recipes:
- Beetroot solution. To prepare it, beets are taken, washed and cut together with the peel, after which it should be placed in water and cooked for two hours. After cooking, the solution must be filtered and cooled. The resulting broth gargle.
- Soda-salt solutions. To do this, you need ordinary table salt, baking soda (one teaspoon each) and a few drops of iodine. The components are mixed in a glass of slightly warm water. This product is used to gargle twice a day.
- Propolis solution, for the preparation of which propolis tincture is used, which can be bought at a pharmacy. A few drops of this product are dissolved in water and rinse the larynx with the finished solution several times a day.
Medicinal herbs for the treatment of purulent plugs in the throat
With the development of this pathology, decoctions and infusions of various medicinal herbs are widely used, which can be prepared according to such recipes:
- Sage. One tablespoon of dry grass is brewed in hot water and the resulting infusion is gargled. Sage has a pronounced anti-inflammatory effect, which allows you to eliminate purulent formations in several procedures.
- Chamomile. It helps in the fight against sore throat in the presence of purulent plugs. To prepare this infusion, two tablespoons of the flowers of this plant are poured with a glass of boiling water. After that, they insist before cooling and are also used when rinsing.
- Yarrow, which is a powerful analgesic. The broth is prepared from 100 grams of dry grass, which is filled with 750 ml of water and heated for two hours in a water bath. This broth is used to gargle every three hours.
Inhalation
To eliminate tonsillitis plugs, inhalation agents can be used to combat them. Inhalation is carried out using a special device (nebulizer) or a teapot. For this procedure, you can use special medications from the pharmacy or herbal decoctions with the addition of peppermint or eucalyptus oils.
Removal of purulent plugs in the throat
Small throat plugs can be removed at home. In this case, care must be taken, because during this procedure, tonsils can be injured, which subsequently leads to even more serious complications.
Self-removal of purulent formations in the throat is recommended to be used after a course of therapy with conservative methods and only if they did not give a positive result. How to remove purulent plugs in the throat is interesting to many.
At home, squeezing caseous plugs using the tongue, cotton swab or washing is used.
Extrusion
Squeezing the plugs with the tongue consists in pressing on the base of the tonsil and palatine arch. The impact should be aimed at removing the cork in the oral cavity. You can try to hurt the language of purulent education, which will facilitate this process. Similarly, the cork is removed within a few minutes.
If you remove a purulent formation on the tonsil with a cotton swab, then this is quite easy to do. This method is effective for eliminating caseous formations of different sizes. For this, a sterile swab is taken, which must be gently pressed on the tonsil. It is necessary to resort to this procedure before meals, so as not to provoke an emetic urge. Before this, it is necessary to carefully treat the hands with a bactericidal solution. It is also recommended to perform oral hygiene before and after the procedure, which is very important, since the purulent discharge remaining in the mouth after squeezing the tube can provoke a secondary infection. The procedure should be performed in front of the mirror in good light. If it is successful, then a purulent plug will appear on the surface of the tonsil.
Possible consequences
This method involves a certain danger, since the formation of plugs on the tonsils is always associated with the inflammatory process, in the focus of which the blood vessels expand and their walls become thinner. Therefore, with self-extrusion of the cork, the likelihood of injury to such a vessel is high, as a result of which small bleeding can occur and, subsequently, the spread of the inflammatory process.
Now it’s clear what to do if there are purulent plugs in the throat.