Weight Gain After Tonsil Removal Not Linked To Increasing Childhood Obesity Rates

The weight gain in children after tonsils removal has no link to increasing obesity rates in children, a new study finds.

More than 500,000 children in the United States have their tonsils removed each year in a process known as adenotonsillectomy. Most often than not, this medical procedure leads to them gaining weight. A team of researchers conducted a study so see if this weight gain had anything to do with the increasing rate of childhood obesity. They were surprised to find that the two were not linked in any way.

For the study, the researchers reviewed medical records of 815 patients that were younger than 18 years and underwent adenotonsillectomy from 2007 through October 2012. The greatest weight gain was observed in children who were smaller in size as well as those who were younger than four years of age. Children above 8 years gained the least amount of weight.

Researchers didn't observe any weight gain among children who were larger during the time of surgery. Eighteen months after the surgery, researchers found that weight percentiles among the study participants increased by an average of 6.3 percentile points.

"Despite the finding that many children gain weight and have higher BMIs after tonsillectomy, in our study, the proportion of children who were obese (BMI >95th percentile) before surgery (14.5 percent) remained statistically unchanged after surgery (16.3 percent). On the basis of this work, adenotonsillectomy does not correlate with increased rates of childhood obesity," the study authors said in a press statement.

Childhood obesity affects one in every three American kids. Currently, 17 percent of the country's children are obese, according to the American Heart Association. Children and adolescents who are obese are likely to be so in adulthood and are therefore, more at risk of health problems such as heart disease, type 2 diabetes, stroke, several types of cancer and osteoarthritis.

Findings of the new study were published online in the journal JAMA Otolaryngology-Head & Neck Surgery. It was supported by the National Institutes of Health Clinical and Translational Science Award and by funding from the Department of Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery at the Stanford University School of Medicine.

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