Tonsilar haemorrhage and re-admission: a questionnaire based study

The aim of our study was to investigate the accuracy of haemorrhage rate in the community (i.e., actual rate versus hospital recorded rate) for tonsil operations. Bleeding episodes were investigated for 695 consecutive patients undergoing tonsillectomy, adenotonsillectomy and tonsillotomy at the Department of ORL, H&NS, MU of Graz, Austria, between January 1 2007 and June 30 2008 by questionnaire. Main purposes of our study were the evaluation of the incidence of postoperative haemorrhage, need for revision surgery, medical care of patients experiencing postoperative bleeding and multiple bleeding episodes. Haemorrhage was defined as any bleeding, be it minimal or significant, after extubation. The study group comprised 407 patients who answered the questionnaire: 61.7% adults, 22.1% school children between 6 and 15 years and 16.2% children aged less than 6 years. Exactly 100 patients (24.6% of 407) showed some kind of postoperative bleeding, but only 79 of them (19.4% of 407) were recorded at hospital. A return to theatre due to haemorrhage was required in 4.7% of all 407 cases. Combining hospital records and data from the questionnaire allowed us to estimate an overall haemorrhage rate of 21.4% for all 695 patients. Every fifth patient experiencing postoperative haemorrhage did not return to the hospital he or she was operated in. We would have missed 21.0% of all bleeding episodes by assessing re-admitting patients suffering postoperative bleeding only. We conclude that haemorrhage rate is considerably higher than assumed by investigating hospital records only and strongly related to the definition of postoperative bleeding and to the study design.