Original Article COMPARISON OF POSTOPERATIVE PAIN BETWEEN COLD STEEL DISSECTION METHOD WITH BIPOLAR DIATHERMY METHOD OF TONSILLECTOMY

Abstract

Background:

Tonsillectomy is performed to relieve the patients from repeated attacks of recurrent tonsillitis. Post-tonsillectomy pain lasts for 8 to 10 days. Postoperative complications like pain after tonsillectomy can lead to more burden on hospital settings and patient’s resources.

Materials and methods:

A hospital-based comparative study was conducted in the Department of ENT, Hayatabad Medical Complex (HMC) Peshawar between June 1, 2019, and Jan 23, 2022, after obtaining ethical approval from the ethical board of HMC. A total of 236 patients were selected and
divided into two equal groups of 118 each, labelled as A and B by consecutive sampling technique. Patients in group A were operated on by the cold steel dissection method while group B by the bipolar diathermy method of tonsillectomy and were assessed for postoperative pain on Visual Analogue Score (VAS). The intensity of pain on VAS was measured after the 6th postoperative hour. Independent t-test for 2 samples was used to compare mean pain scores between the groups and one-way ANOVA test for the differences of pain scores among different age groups.

Results:

Bipolar diathermy electro dissection has mean post-operative pain of 7.62±1.79 on VAS as compared to cold steel technique with mean pain of 5.41±2.42 which was then analyzed using independent t-test and was found to be statistically significant with p-value < 0.001. One-way ANOVA was used to see differences in pain scores among different age groups in groups A and B, which showed a significant difference in pain scores with a p-value < 0.04.

Conclusion:

The Diathermy method of tonsillectomy caused more pain compared to the cold steel method. Pain scores among the two groups increase with age.