Comparative Study of Pain Scale Assessment Between Cold Verses Hot Tonsillectomy Method

Tonsillectomy is an age old surgery especially in pediatric population. Over the last few years, various techniques have been proposed in performing tonsillectomy in an attempt to lower the morbidity and mortality. This study compares the post-operative pain scale of cold dissection method and newer methods like coblation, radiofrequency and bipolar cautery assisted tonsillectomy. In our prospective study, we selected 30 patients and randomly divided them into three groups. We had performed right side tonsillectomy in each divided group of ten with coblation, radiofrequency and bipolar cautery assisted and on left side tonsillectomy dissection and snare method to all subjects. We compared post-operative pain scale on the right and left side in next consecutive 3 post-operative days by using VAS of Wong-Baker. Of these 30 patients mean age is 10 ± 3 years and there is no significant sex distribution. In group 1 right side bipolar cautery (hot) method, pain scale was on 3 consecutive post-operative days (6.1 ± 1.5), (6.0 ± 1.5), (5.2 ± 0.9) when compared to left side cold method (p value 0.06). In group 2 right side coblation (hot) method, post-operative pain scale was (2.9 ± 1.6), (2.4 ± 1.6), (1.2 ± 1.4) which when compared to left side cold method showed that pain was significantly reduced (p value 0.03). In group 3 right side radiofrequency (hot) method post-operative pain scale was (4.6 ± 1.0), (2.5 ± 1.2), (1.5 ± 1.4) when compared to left side cold method pain (p value 0.08). This study revealed that coblation assisted hot tonsillectomy has less pain when compared to other techniques with normal cold method. It also has early recovery.