Postoperative pain following coblation tonsillectomy: randomized clinical trial.
BACKGROUND
Tonsillectomy is one of the commonest surgical procedures, with postoperative pain being an important source of morbidity. Coblation (cold ablation) is a new technique for tonsillectomy, promoted by claims of reduced postoperative pain levels. This study was designed to compare postoperative pain after tonsillectomy using coblation and tonsillectomy using the standard dissection techniques.


METHODS
Twenty adult patients underwent tonsillectomy, each having one randomly selected tonsil removed by dissection and the other removed by coblation. For each side, subjective pain levels were recorded on a daily basis for 10 postoperative days, using a visual analogue scale.


RESULTS
Coblation tonsillectomy was significantly less painful than dissection tonsillectomy on day 1 (P < 0.001), day 2 (P = 0.003) and day 3 (P = 0.018). For all subsequent postoperative days, there was no significant difference in pain levels between the techniques.


CONCLUSIONS
Coblation tonsillectomy causes significantly less pain during the first three postoperative days, when compared with dissection tonsillectomy. No demonstrable benefit was shown on days 4-10. The beneficial effects of coblation on early postoperative pain make it a potentially attractive technique for day-case tonsillectomy in adults with recurrent or chronic tonsillitis.
Polites
Nastasha
N
Department of Otolaryngology, Flinders Medical Centre and Flinders University, Adelaide, Australia.
Joniau
Sander
S
Wabnitz
David
D
Fassina
Rob
R
Smythe
Clinton
C
Varley
Paul
P
Carney
A Simon
AS