Surgery to remove offending tissues in children having mild throat infections, enlarged Tonsils ot enlarged adenoids offers no major clinical benifits.
Reasearchers from university Medical centre, Utrecht, conducted a study of 300 children who were candidates for adeno-tonsillectomy because of recurrent throat infection or because they had enlarged tonsils or adenoids. The kids were randomly assigned to undergo surgery or be followed with a watchful waiting strategy. After an average follow up of 22 months, the number of fever episodes in the surgery group was nearly the same as in the watchful waiting group.Subjects in the surgery and watchful waiting groups averaged 0.6 and 0.8 throat infections per person per year, respectively.
Though the improvements in quality of life were significantly seen with tonsilectomy from a statistical stand point, but they were not considered clinically relevent. There was also evedience that surgery was more effective for children with three to six throat infections per year, rather than two or fewer. The result of the study indicate that surgery offers little benifit to children, but it does marginally reduce the number of episodes of fever, throat infections, and upper respiratory tract infections per person per year.
No comments:
Post a Comment