What is Chronic Fibrotic Tonsillitis?

Chronic fibrotic tonsillitis may be without symptoms but is frequently characterized by the more or less continued presence of pus in the tonsils. Some patients have the sensation, lasting perhaps for only a minute or two, of a foreign body lodged in the tonsil. The patient frequently coughs up the yellowish masses, which have a fetid odor.

Occasionally the mouth of a crypt becomes closed by inflammatory adhesions and the yellowish color shows through the thin membranous covering over the mouth of the crypt.

If the symptoms annoy the patient and recur at frequent intervals, or if the patient has evidence of infection in a remote part of the body, the tonsils may be removed.

Hakimeh B. Kadivar, M.D.
Diplomate, American Board of Otolaryngology
Member, South Bay Independent Physicians Medical Group, Inc.