DOCTOR’S WARNING

Press, Volume CV, Issue 30954, 10 January 1966, Page 2

DOCTOR’S WARNING

Surgery For Tonsils

(N.Z.P.A.-Reuter—Copyright > LONDON, January’ 9. Tonsil and adenoid operations for children under five years could do more harm than good, a doctor warned today in the medical journal, the “Lancet.” Dr. J. A. Davis, of the Child Health Research Unit at London’s Hammersmith Hospital, said that parents who allowed their children to have these operations should ask themselves whether what they propose was “a treatment or a ritual.”

Dr. Davis questioned the justification for the operation on children under five or six years merely for the sake of preventing about “10 days minor illness in the succeeding year.” Drugs Alternative

There was increasing evidence that the use of certain drugs could achieve exactly the same result as a tonsil or adenoid operation. “This would seem to be a much cheaper and safer form of treatment,” Dr. Davis said. Dr. Davis wrote a letter to the "Lancet” commenting on the case of a three-year-old girl who virtually sobbed herself to death in hospital last month after this type of operation.

“This child's fate should make every parent, general practitioner, paediatrician, surgeon and resident take another look at the justification for subjecting some 90,000 British children a year to a similar hazard,” he said. Deterioration

Dr. Davis said the common experience of doctors was that children often deteriorated after such an operation, which suggested that for a certain period of childhood the tonsils were essential organs. “Those of us who have had to care for children after the tonsils and adenoids operation know that it is a nerve-racking and often heart-rending responsibility, and that for every fatality there are a number of near misses,” he said.