Anaesthesia for paediatric tonsillectomy. Comparison of spontaneous ventilation and intermittent positive pressure ventilation.

Fifty children undergoing tonsillectomy were anaesthetized using either a spontaneous ventilation (SV) technique with halothane (and nitrous oxide in oxygen) or intermittent positive pressure ventilation (IPPV) (with nitrous oxide, in oxygen) facilitated by atracurium 0.5 mg kg-1. Time to full recovery was significantly less in the IPPV group (1.8 +/- 3.79 min) than the SV group (20.0 +/- 6.77 min) (P less than 0.001) and ventilated children had a better quality of long-term recovery (sleep score 1.02 for the SV and 1.44 for the IPPV groups) (P less than 0.01). Apart from a significantly greater E'CO2 in the halothane group (7.3 kPa +/- 0.9 compared with 5.1 kPa +/- 0.5) (P less than 0.001), there was no significant difference in operative or postoperative morbidity.