Assessment of secondary hemorrhage following tonsillectomy

Abstract

We determined the rate of secondary haemorrhage following tonsillectomy by performing a telephone interview with 60 consecutive patients from ages 12+ years and above undergoing tonsillectomy alone. We were able to contact all Patients in our study group and found that 40% of patients reported a significant episode of bleeding postoperatively following discharge. Many previous studies only considered readmission rates for secondary haemorrhage that are clearly much lower than this and highly variable. We would suggest that although secondary hemorrhage can occasionally be very serious, the majority is minor. It therefore would be more useful to consider numbers of patients returning to theatre than readmission rates when comparing different techniques for tonsillectomy.