Thermal Welding Tonsillectomy versus Monopolar Electrocautery Tonsillectomy: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis of Randomized Clinical Trials.

OBJECTIVE: In hopes of contributing to the decision about the best surgical option in tonsillectomy, we performed this work to compare the effectiveness of the thermal welding system (TW) and monopolar electrocautery (ME) tonsillectomy in terms of postoperative pain, postoperative bleeding, and operation time in patients undergoing tonsillectomy, to determine which procedure is most expected to enhance the postoperative quality of life.

METHODS: Digital databases, including PubMed, Scopus, Cochrane, Web of Science, and Google Scholar, were systematically screened from inception up to October 2022. The included randomized controlled trials (RCTs) were evaluated for risk of bias via the Cochrane tool (version 2). The outcomes were summarized as risk ratio (RR) or mean difference/standardized mean difference (MD/SMD) with a 95% confidence interval (CI) in a random-effects model.

RESULTS: The three RCTs that met our criteria were included in the study. Overall, 151 patients had been enrolled in these three RCTs, in which 75 and 76 were allocated to the TW and ME groups, respectively. The postoperative pain levels were substantially reduced, favoring the TW arm over the ME arm [n=2 RCTs, SMD=-0.39, 95% CI (-0.67, -0.12), p=0.005]. Also, the analysis revealed a substantial variation between the TW and ME arms in terms of operation time [n=2 RCTs, MD=3.29 minutes, 95% CI (1.42, 5.17), p=0.0006]. However, the analysis revealed no substantial variation between the TW and ME arms in term of postoperative bleeding [n=3 RCTs, RR=0.40, 95% CI (0.06, 2.62), p=0.34].

CONCLUSION: This meta-analysis revealed that postoperative bleeding for tonsillectomy were similar between the ME and TW techniques. However, TW showed lower postoperative pain levels than ME statistically but without achieving significant clinical advantage.