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Tonsillectomy

A new study says children who have their tonsils out get benefits that go far beyond the elimination of strep throat.

Thirty years ago, tonsillectomy was performed on more than a million children each year.
But now, it’s performed on just a fraction of that, either for repeated ear and throat infections or because of difficulty with breathing.

Still, sleep-disordered breathing is extremely common. It affects probably two to three-percent of children.

And now, maybe, by removing the tonsils and adenoids, you can remove both sleep and behavior problems in one shot!

“My mind would start to wander and like I’d be staring at the middle of the room. And I’d like, I’d get in trouble ‘cause I wasn’t paying attention and all that.” Many kids with behavior issues like Hanaan Abouzaahr may, in fact, be suffering from a problem called sleep-disordered breathing: problems such as snoring and sleep apnea. “The snoring was quite a big problem. It, the whole house, well almost the whole house couldn’t sleep,” recalls Hanaan.

New research out of the University of Michigan and published in the journal Pediatrics shows children who suffer from sleep-disordered breathing due to enlarged tonsils and adenoids, and who suffer from hyperactivity and inattentive behaviors, may experience substantial improvement after the removal of their tonsils.

About half of the children in the study who were found to have attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder before tonsil surgery no longer met criteria for this diagnosis one year later.

They were cured!

“So the inattention and the hyperactivity and even the ADHD had all been reduced, in general,” says Dr. Ronald Chervin, study author at the University of Michigan.

“Tonsils are organs in the back of the throat that actually tend to filter out infections that would normally go elsewhere in the body, tonsils have a function and to remove tonsils unnecessarily remove some of your immune defenses that nature provided you with,” says Dr. Richard Saphir, a pediatrician. He says not to jump the gun on presuming a tonsillectomy is going to help every child who has ADHD symptoms and sleep-disordered breathing. “This is very preliminary. This may be worth while but then again it may not be a worth while, it is worth investigating more.”

The researchers do warn that their results do not yet prove cause and effect, and that tonsillectomy is not usually a "cure" for ADHD.

But, they say, the evidence suggests some kids may benefit from having their tonsils and adenoids removed.

“A child who is hyperactive, for example, and doesn’t sleep well at night, that should be an indication to discuss those issues with a pediatrician, possibly to see a sleep specialist,” states Dr. Chervin.

The authors say behavioral damage from sleep-disordered breathing may occur in early years, even though the result is not seen until later. If confirmed, this would mean that early diagnosis and treatment of sleep-disordered breathing are particularly important.

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