Main Results
The number of tonsillitis episodes experienced during the lockdown 2 months (mean 0.84 SEM 0.17) was significantly less than in the 2 preceding months (mean 1.80 SEM 0.17) (p=0.0001) (Figure 2). In terms of antibiotic requirement for tonsillitis, there was a significant decrease in patient use from the 2 months prior to lockdown (70% of patients) versus the 2 months of lockdown (32% of patients) (p=0.0002). None of the patients attended hospital during the lockdown period as a result of tonsillitis compared with 4 patients in the prior 2 months. No patients suffered a tonsillitis related complication in either period.
The average number of children per household was 2.3. There was no significant difference in the number of children per household in the cohort of children who suffered with tonsillitis during the lockdown (2.4 per household) compared to those who were tonsillitis free (2.2 per household) (p>0.05).
All parents wanted to go ahead with the tonsillectomy when asked. Parents were asked whether they would like their child’s tonsillectomy to be during the COVID-19 outbreak or after the outbreak. Thirty-one parents were happy for their child’s tonsillectomy to occur during the COVID-19 outbreak with 13 wanting to postpone until after the outbreak (Figure 3). The group who elected to delay their procedure until after the outbreak had a significantly lower average number of tonsillitis episodes during the lockdown than the group who wanted surgery during the outbreak (0.08 vs 1.6 episodes respectively, p=0.0001). This was not the case for the 2 month period prior to lockdown (p>0.05) (Figure 4).