Tonsillectomy or tonsillotomy? — a randomized study comparing postoperative pain and long-term effects

Tonsillotomy: it's time to clarify the facts

“…His conclusions read different but are not contradictory to the better findings of another study with a follow-up of 6 days [36]. However, the pain score was significantly lower within the first 24 h after TT in the study of Hultcrantz et al [11]. Unfortunately, the surgical technique of ''regular tonsillectomy'' was not described, but it can be assumed that it was cold steel TE according to other papers by the same author.…”

“…While operation time was not stated for seven Class I procedures, one author stated that the procedure took ''less than tonsillectomy 0 s about 2.5 min'' [29]. Three authors measured operation times between 21 and 28 min on average [11,22,24] and only Densert et al [12] completed the procedure within 3-4 min.…”

“…Concerning Class I techniques, only Hultcrantz and Korkmaz addressed the issue and collected amounts of 11, 17.7, and 44.2 ml on average, respectively [11,22,24].…”

“…Hultcrantz et al [11] relied on that technique but later injected an amount of only 2-3 ml of the same agent [22]. Derkay et al [47] injected 10 ml of the same agent into both anterior facial pillars and Passavant 0 s ridge before and into the posterior pillar and the tongue base after SIPT with a microdebrider.…”

“…In 1994, Krespi and Ling [9] recommended the CO 2 -LASER for ''serial tonsillectomy'' to treat recurrent infection, sore throat, and halitosis in adults. In children, a considerably reduced morbidity after ''tonsillotomy'' with modern techniques was first reported in 1999 by Linder et al [10] and Hultcrantz et al [11], followed by Densert et al [12], and Helling et al [13] in 2001 and 2002, respectively. The results were confirmed with the first large retrospective study in 2003 by Koltai et al [14] who used a microdebrider as surgical instrument.…”