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(Ivanhoe Newswire) -- Having a childs tonsils and adenoids removed to stop snoring appears to work only in the short term, according to a new research from. Furthermore, the rate of relapse was highest in obese children and African American children.
Most post-adenotonsillectomy outcome studies have focused on the assessment of [sleep disordered breathing (SDB)] six to 16 weeks after surgery, Raouf Amin M.D., director of pulmonary medicine at Cincinnati Childrens Hospital Medical Center, was quoted as saying. Resolution of SDB during this window was usually interpreted as a cure for the disorder.
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Researchers recruited 40 healthy children between 7 and 13 years of age whose parents and doctors had agreed to do adenotonsillectomies to treat nightly snoring. In the first six weeks following surgery, all the children showed improvement as measured by their respiratory disturbance index scores. After a year, however, the children who relapsed were more likely to be obese, have worse SDB at the baseline, have an accelerated body mass index (BMI) gain and to be African American. Researchers also noted children who relapsed had significantly higher blood pressure at follow up than children who did not.
Given the rate of relapse, we advocate long-term follow up of children with SBD, monitoring of BMI gain and re-evaluation of children to demonstrate rapid BMI gain, especially those who are African American, study authors concluded.
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SOURCE: American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine, 2008;177:654-659
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