Bleeding After Tonsillectomy (Pictures)

Bleeding after Tonsillectomy (circa 2010) 5 years old patient Bleeding after tonsillectomy is a very rare, but potentially life-threatening event. The often quoted probability of bleeding after this surgery is 1 in 1000 . Many surgeons have statistics much better than this. I like to consider myself in this "better" group. But... no matter how good you are, if enough tonsillectomies are performed, statistically, a significant bleed after tonsillectomy will occur at some point no…

3/06/2015 4

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Steroids Helpful After Tonsillectomy?

Pain is perhaps the most common dreaded fear patients have when considering tonsillectomy surgery.  After pain, bleeding is perhaps the 2nd greatest concern patients have. With both these issues, steroids play a key role by helping with one at the expense of the other. In the 2011 Clinical Practice Guideline: Tonsillectomy in Children , the authors strongly recommend giving a single large dose of steroids to help with not just pain, but also nausea and vomiting after surgery. It is not jus…

9/20/2014 0

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Do Nosebleeds Cause Stool Blood Tests to Become Positive?

As a general rule, an ordinary nosebleed will not cause a screening stool blood test  (hemoccult or guaiac) to come back positive. However, if the nosebleed is bad enough to consider going to the emergency room... and you are swallowing a lot of it... only than will it be likely that such stool tests will come back positive for blood. To be precise, such stool tests turn positive only if there's at least 2+ teaspoons of blood leaking into the digestive system everyday (or swallowed…

5/31/2013 0

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Blood Type Group O Associated With Higher Rates of Post-Tonsillectomy Bleeding

In the July 2010 volume of International Journal of Pediatric Otorhinolaryngology, researchers in Ireland published an interesting finding that 63% of bleeding after tonsillectomy were in patients with Blood Type O. The general population Blood Type O is only 55%. Although the authors were careful to state that this finding does not demonstrate causality, this association does suggest that patients with Type-O blood are more likely to suffer from secondary bleeds following tonsillectomy. …

6/16/2010 0

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Redheads Have Lower Pain Thresholds

The New York Times on Aug 6, 2009 published a story " The Pain of Being a Redhead " that describes research why redheads experience more pain than other individuals. Apparently, red hair color is caused by variants of the melanocortin-1 receptor (MC1R) gene. People with naturally red hair are resistant to subcutaneous local anesthetics and, therefore, may experience increased anxiety and pain regarding dental care as well as other surgical procedures. Having this gene variant sign…

8/11/2009 0

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