Surgical arrest of post-tonsillectomy haemorrhage: hospital episode statistics 2016-2022

Return to theatre for arrest of post-tonsillectomy haemorrhage represents a significant complication of a commonly performed Ear, Nose and Throat procedure. We used Hospital Episode Statistics data to quantify this risk. This method has been used previously for data from 2002-2004 and again for 2010-2016. In this article, coblation tonsillectomy was considered separately as it had not been analysed in previous studies.

We used Hospital Episode Statistics data provided by the Department of Health to determine the risk of return to theatre for patients undergoing tonsillectomy between 2016 and 2022. Adults and children were analysed separately.

Between 1 April 2016 and 30 April 2022, 179,172 tonsillectomies were performed (not including coblation tonsillectomy), 4,311 (2.41%) of which returned to theatre for control of postoperative bleeding. In children, 1.16% returned to theatre, whereas in adults, 3.80% returned (p<0.05). When including coblation tonsillectomy, the return to theatre rate was 0.82% in children, 3.46% in adults and 1.92% overall.

This study shows that adults remain more than three times more likely than children to require a return to theatre for arrest of haemorrhage following tonsillectomy. The rates of post-tonsillectomy haemorrhage decrease when coblation tonsillectomies are added to the analysis. The rate of return to theatre for post-tonsillectomy haemorrhage seems to have stabilised compared with previous work carried out. The authors recommend further work to assess the complication rate of tonsillectomy in the UK and to compare coblation tonsillectomy with other techniques.