Have you had your tonsils out? If you’re a millennial, the answer is probably no. Tonsillectomies, once all the rage in the mid-to-late 20th century, have fallen off sharply in recent decades.
They may not have fallen off far enough, though. A new study suggests that seven of every eight tonsillectomies in Britain weren’t actually necessary.
Writing in the British Journal of General Practice, researchers from the University of Birmingham say that an analysis of medical records from 1.6 million children shows that just 11.7 percent of children who’d had their tonsils removed needed it. The rest simply hadn’t had enough sore throats (seven in a year, five per year for two years or three per year for three years) to justify a surgical intervention.
All told, 32,000 children had an invasive surgery that probably wasn’t necessary.
Indeed, almost half of children who’d had a tonsillectomy had just two sore ...
