Paediatric tonsillectomy: parental experience and outcomes

Objective: To evaluate parental experience, satisfaction and outcomes following their child's tonsillectomy surgery. Design: Structured postal questionnaire sent to the parents or guardians of 77 sequential children undergoing elective day-case tonsillectomy. Subjects: Seventy-seven children with a mean age of 6.25 years (range three to 17 years) undergoing day-case tonsillectomy predominantly for recurrent acute tonsillitis, upper airway obstruction or a combination of these symptoms; 63.6 per cent of the parents or guardians of these children responded to the questionnaire. Results: There was overall satisfaction with the operation, and positive health outcomes. Conclusions: Despite the current public health agenda to limit access to routine high volume operations such as childhood tonsillectomy on economic grounds, the users of this service rated the outcomes and benefits of the procedure highly.