Tuesday, April 21, 2015

Association Between Tonsillectomy, Oral Cancer Evaluated.


The Atlantic (4/21) reports that a study published in the journal Cancer Prevention Research and led by Johns Hopkins University otolaryngologist Carole Fakhry “evaluated more than three million Danish patients in a 35-year database and found that palatine tonsil removal was associated with a 60 to 85 percent decrease in tonsillar cancers.” Moreover, the researchers noted that “rates of cancer of the palatine and lingual tonsils are increasing” due to the sexually transmitted human papillomavirus. In an editorial accompanying the study, Anil Chaturvedi, an investigator at the Division of Cancer Epidemiology at NIH, noted that more studies were needed before determining whether tonsillectomy should be a mandatory preventative procedure.

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