An Epidemic of Tonsillectomies
This is Sarah Kliff at Ezra Klein’s blog:
It turns out we’re in the middle of an epidemic – a tonsillectomy epidemic, to be more specific. Tonsillectomies are the most common procedure, for children, requiring anesthesia. And we’re doing more of them: The number of tonsillectomies performed spiked by 74 percent between 1996 and 2006. In 2006 alone, more than a half-million children in the United States got their tonsils removed. The only problem is there’s no evidence they work for most children.
She’s just signed up for President Obama’s re-election campaign! (Just kidding: I like Sarah Kliff’s articles a lot.) Remember back in 2009 when Mr. Obama attacked the surgeons for just ripping kids’ tonsils out for profit? It really backfired at the time. This link is the American Academy of Otolaryngolgy’s defence of tonsilletomy against Mr. Obama’s smear:
http://www.businesswire.com/portal/site/google/?ndmViewId=news_view&newsId=20090723006009&newsLang=en.
Pattern is hard to explain.
What did people do in the old days when it wasn’t possible to do tonsillectomies?
Apparently, they’ve been doing tonsillectomies for thousands of years.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2384338/pdf/ulstermedj00143-0071.pdf
Some of the early research on regional variation in medical practice looked at tonsillectomies, and tonsillectomy rates varied pretty widely between otherwise similar populations.
I am glad that I made it through my childhood intact. I have heard that tonsillectomies are pretty major surgeries.
Ah, evidence! Never mind that physicians have observed that children with problematic tonsils have far fewer infections after surgery, we need a randomized trial in which 1/2 the kids have their tonsils taken out.