has anyone else's kids had had the surgery for the tearduct blockage? Do they generally have a stuffy nose after? The blood is gone, but he sounds so stuffy he can barely use his paci cause he cant breath. Otherwise, recovery is fine ( just as crazy as he was before!!)

My son had BOTH tearducts blocked and was that a horrible experience!!! It naturally cleared by 5 months of age, but his eyes were goopy and crusty everyday! I wish I would have known about this when he had the blocked tear ducts, but they say to put 'breastmilk' in thier eyes and that sometimes clears them.

Bye the way......how is the surgery done?

My DD is 8 mos old and there telling me Im going to have to have this done to her left eye it is goopy and crusty all day and she hates it touched which makes it hard to clean.. How do they do the surgery? Whats it like afterward recovery wise?

Actually its very quick, it is done under anthesesia(sp?) due to the nature of the surgery, but it takes about a half hour or less. My son had both ducts cleared that were both blocked with "bony structure" internally.

They go through the tear duct and out through the nose with blunt untensils, no cutting or sharp things. My son did have a good bloody nose for one day, a little purple under the eyes but overall he was fine. '

We went to a large childrens hospital which I highly recommend doing beacuse everyone knows kids and everything there is for kids. And the anesthesia person is used to children dosage.

Good luck.

Thanks for the info I was worried about it

My daughter has had three surgeries on her tear ducts. At 15 months of age, her tear ducts were both still blocked, so they "probed them"--a procedure exactly like what was said in a previous thread. It was super easy--25 minutes, no cutting, just a thin wire put down each tear duct into her nose. She had a bloody nose for a day or two, but after a good nap following the procedure, we actually went to a playgroup date. Unfortunately, her tear duct issues didn't improve. Consequently, at 26 months of age, she had to have stents put in. Stents are little tubes that run from the inside corner of the eye down into the nose. Again, it's a short procedure (45 minutes for both), involving no cutting. The procedure is a slightly bigger deal than the probing, simply because a foreign body (the stents) are being placed into a highly narrowed region (the tear ducts). In our daughter's case, her tear ducts had completely closed and grown together, thus the function of the stents was to reopen them and recreate the tear channels. Stents are usually left in for 6 months, and can be seen if you look the child directly in the eye--they look like the ends of little pieces of spaghetti, and sit right inside the corner of their eye. They aren't bothersome (which is amazing, because it sure seems like they would be). Our daughter only had her stents in for 4 months, and then had to have them out (the third surgery) due to an unrelated eye infection that caused bleeding from the stent site. Again, having the stents out was quicker than the probing! Hopefully, your child won't have to go through all this, and has recovered fully from his/her tear duct issues. However, just a head's up that should stents be required at some point, it's a "no big deal" procedure. Our daughter is now 4 and things are great. I found our son's trip to the ER for stitches (hit is head on a bedpost while running) FAR more nerve-racking and stressful! ;)