Prevalence of Patients Who Return to Theatre Post-Adenoidectomy: A Review of Hospital Episode Statistics Data (2012-2019)

Abstract

Introduction Risk of surgical intervention for post-adenoidectomy haemorrhage can be assessed with the analysis of the Hospital Episode Statistics (HES) data. Materials and methods HES data for England from 2012 to 2019 were analysed comparing the coded number of adenoidectomy procedures to the number of surgical arrests of post-adenoidectomy haemorrhage in adolescents/adults and children. Results Between April 2012 and April 2019, of 47,597 procedures, 52 (0.11%) patients required surgical arrest of post-adenoidectomy haemorrhage. In adults (n = 5,379), 11 patients returned to theatre for control of post-operative bleeding, whereas 41 children (n = 42,218) required this intervention. The total number of adenoidectomies was 3.7 times higher in children; however, adults were statistically two times more likely to require further surgical intervention for arrest of post-adenoidectomy haemorrhage (two-tailed p-value = 0.0031). Conclusion Children are more likely to return to theatre for surgical arrest of post-adenoidectomy haemorrhage, with p-values indicating the difference between the incidence of adults and children returning to theatre to be very statistically significant.

Reference rate for post-tonsillectomy haemorrhage in Australia—A 2000–2020 national hospital morbidity database analysis

“…However, haemorrhage following adenoidectomy that is sufficiently severe to require the return to theatre is relatively uncommon and has been estimated by a UK study to occur in 0.5% of adenoidectomy cases [ 54 ]. Adjusting for rates of adenoidectomy haemorrhage in adenotonsillectomy procedures would have the effect of correcting an over-estimation of the PTH reported in our study for the paediatric age group, and to a lesser degree, correcting an over-estimation of the overall PTH rate (i.e., for all ages) given adenoidectomy is an uncommon procedure among adults [ 55 ]. Further, patients that required multiple return to theatre for PTH were not identifiable from the NHMD datasets.…”