Tonsil-Adenoid Surgery May Help Behavior, Too

Researchers have found strong evidence that adenotonsillectomy — the surgery to remove the tonsils and adenoids — can help relieve childhood behavioral or attention problems, including attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder, or A.D.H.D.

Although the surgery has become less common with antibiotics, more than 400,000 children under 15 have their tonsils, adenoids or both removed every year, according to estimates by the Metropolitan Insurance Company. About half of the patients undergo the procedure to control chronic throat or ear infections. The rest have the operation to relieve breathing difficulty or nighttime sleep apnea, a serious disorder in which the sleeping child briefly stops breathing during the night.

Researchers studied 78 children who were scheduled for the operation, and a control group of 27 children having other surgery. According to the paper, which was published yesterday in Pediatrics, it has been known that children with sleep disorders often have behavior problems. But no cause-and-effect relationship has been established.

All the children spent one night in a sleep laboratory to record their sleep and breathing patterns. Their parents filled out scales that measured their children's behavior, each child was tested for vigilance and concentration and their daytime sleepiness was measured and recorded. Finally, a child psychiatrist determined which children's difficulties merited the diagnosis of attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder.

Compared with the control group, the children scheduled for adenotonsillectomy were more likely to be hyperactive by their parents' estimates and more likely to experience behavior problems and sleepiness at school. Twenty-two of the adenotonsillectomy patients, but only 2 of the controls, had a diagnosis of attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder.

At follow-up a year later, seven children whose tonsils and adenoids had been removed and one from the control group had sleep apnea. Only 11 of the 22 adenotonsillectomy patients with A.D.H.D. still had the disorder a year after the operation. The difference between the two groups in frequency of the diagnosis, quite pronounced before surgery, was statistically insignificant a year later.