Post-tonsillectomy complications more likely in children from lower-income families

Removing a child’s tonsils is one of the most common surgeries performed in the United States, with approximately 500,000 children undergoing the procedure each year. New research by doctors at UCLA finds that children from lower-income families are more likely to have complications following the surgery. In the first study of its kind to analyze post-operative complications requiring a doctor’s visit within the first 14 days after tonsillectomy, researchers saw a significant disparity based on income status, race and ethnicity. “Surprisingly, despite all children having a relatively uniform health status before surgery, we found significant differences in the numbers of children requiring revisits after their tonsillectomies,” said co-author Dr. Nina Shapiro, director of pediatric otolaryngology at Mattel Children’s Hospital UCLA and a professor of head and neck surgery at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA. To conduct the study, Shapiro and Dr. Neil Bhattacharyya, professor of otolaryngology at Harvard Medical School, examined the complication rate in close to 80,000 children who had tonsillectomy surgeries in an outpatient setting (with or without an adenoidectomy) in four states — California, Iowa, Florida and New York. They reviewed ambulatory surgery databases from 2010 and 2011 and linked them to emergency room and inpatient databases. The revisit rates and diagnoses in the 14 days after tonsil removal surgery were analyzed with respect to gender,...
Source: UCLA Newsroom: Health Sciences - Category: Universities & Medical Training Source Type: news