Tonsillectomy and adenotomy as a one day procedure?

With special reference to the postoperative hemorrhage rate and its subsequent course, we retrospectively evaluated the outcome of 2,363 tonsillectomies and 3,295 adenotomies performed over the last 11 years at our department. The postadenotomy major bleeding frequency was 0.2%. After tonsillectomy the immediate postoperative major bleeding frequency was 2.6% and 3.0%, respectively in children and adults. Secondary bleeding after tonsillectomy occurred in 0.3% of the children and 0.5% of the adults. In contrast to adenotomy, which can be considered as a safe one day procedure, based on our results we propose to perform tonsillectomy as a more prolonged, one night stay procedure.