Tonsillectomy by Cold Dissection and Coblation Techniques: A Prospective Comparative Study

Inflammatory and infectious diseases of tonsils are common in paediatric and adult otolaryngological practice and ensue in tonsillectomy which is a common surgical procedure. Dissection and snare method is being performed for ages and has evolved over a period of time while coblation is a newer technique started in 1997. It combines radiofrequency energy and normal saline, resulting in a plasma field of highly ionized particles which dissociates intercellular bonds and thus melts tissue at low temperatures (40-70 °C) thereby reducing tissue damage. To compare the intraoperative time, intraoperative blood loss, post operative pain and post operative blood loss between dissection tonsillectomy and coblation tonsillectomy. This study was carried out at the outpatient Department of Otorhinolaryngology and Head and Neck Surgery in Meenakshi Medical College, Hospital and Research Institute, Tamil Nadu. Patients with chronic and recurrent tonsillitis who were planned electively for tonsillectomy were included in this study. Study was based on the analysis of 60 patients aged between 5 and 40 years. All these 60 patients were thoroughly investigated by doing a complete surgical workup. They all were subjected to 2 different tonsillectomy procedures-dissection and snare method and coblation technique. Patients were assigned into two groups of 30 each by simple random sampling. Among these 60 patients, blood loss and post operative pain was less in Group 2 (coblation) and the duration of surgery was less in Group 1 (dissection and snare). In this study, patients who underwent surgery in Group 2 (coblation) showed better outcome when compared to Group 1 (dissection and snare method).