European Journal of Molecular & Clinical Medicine

Abstract

Background: Tonsillectomy is one of the most common surgical procedures in the world, various other techniques have been attempted over the previous decades to lower morbidity of this operation, and one of these new techniques is the bipolar radiofrequency dissection to remove the tonsils.
Objectives: This study is to compare the radiofrequency tonsillectomy with traditional cold steel dissection tonsillectomy prospectively regarding intraoperative time and blood loss, and postoperative pain and complications in children.
Methods: 194 children suffering from recurrent tonsillitis are included in this study, their age range from 3-16 years, they are divided randomly into two equal groups, each group 97 children, and one group sustained bipolar radiofrequency tonsillectomy while the second group sustained traditional cold dissection tonsillectomy. In all operations we record blood loss amount and operative time and they are followed for 10 days after operation during which we record degree of pain and incidence of postoperative complications.
Results: The radiofrequency tonsillectomy patients got less intraoperative blood loss (mean 10ml) and shorter operation time (mean 9 minutes), when compared with cold steel dissection tonsillectomy ( mean blood loss 80ml,mean time 16 minutes). The postoperative pain was significantly less in the radiofrequency patients than in the cold steel dissection tonsillectomy patients. In addition, no postoperative hemorrhage occurred after radiofrequency tonsillectomy in our study but it happened in 2 of cold steel dissection tonsillectomy group of patients.
Conclusions: Radiofrequency tonsillectomy is better than cold dissection tonsillectomy in terms of lower blood loss and operation time, with less postoperative pain and complications, so we recommend it as an ideal technique for tonsillectomy.