Long-term efficacy of tonsillectomy in Chinese patients with IgA nephropathy

To investigate the clinical efficacy of tonsillectomy on long-term clinical remission and renal survival of immunoglobulin A nephropathy (IgAN) patients in China.

We performed a 130-month retrospective case-control study of 112 patients with idiopathic biopsy-diagnosed IgAN from 1983 to 1999. Fifty-four patients underwent tonsillectomy and 58 patients did not. The clinical remission rate during follow-up and variables to predict clinical remission were estimated by chi2 test and multivariate Cox regression analysis; renal survival was evaluated by Kaplan-Meier analysis.

Up to 2006, the follow-up period lasted 130 +/- 50.3 months (60-276 months). The clinical remission rate was 46.3% in patients with tonsillectomy and 27.6% in those without tonsillectomy during follow-up. Multivariate analysis demonstrated that tonsillectomy was not an independent impact factor for renal clinical remission (p = 0.386). By Kaplan-Meier analysis, there was no significant difference in renal survival rate between patients with tonsillectomy and those without tonsillectomy (p = 0.059).

The clinical remission rate in IgAN patients with tonsillectomy was higher than that in patients without tonsillectomy during follow-up. But within 130 months, it was difficult to find statistical difference in renal survival between IgAN patients with and without tonsillectomy.