Introduction: Tonsillectomy is one of the most common surgeries all over the world and is performed by various methods. This study aimed to investigate the complications of bipolar electrocautery method of tonsillectomy.

Methods: This cross-sectional study was performed on 234 patients, 114 female and 120 male individuals. The mean age of the patients was 12.2±8.3 (min=3 and max=58.2) years. Some parameters including duration of surgery, intraoperative blood loss, postoperative hemorrhage, severity of pain were measured 4 and 24 hours after operation. The data were analyzed by SPSS software (Version 15) using Mann-Whitney, Kruskal-Wallis and Spearman tests. P values less than 0.05 were considered significant.

Results: In our study, the mean duration of surgery was 12.7±4.5 minutes, mean intraoperative blood loss was 36.6±10.8 ml, and postoperative hemorrhage was observed in 3.4 % of patients. The mean pain scores 4 hours after operation were 2.1±0.7 and 2.7±0.8 for age groups below and over 10 years old respectively, while these scores were 2.4±0.8 and 3.2±1 after 24 hours of operation for them respectively with the difference being significant (p < 0.05). Furthermore, duration of surgery correlated significantly with intraoperative blood loss (r=0.1 and P=0.01) and pain 4 hours after operation (r=0.1 and p=0.004).

Conclusions: In our study, mean intraoperative blood loss, postoperative hemorrhage, and duration of surgery were greater than what has been reported in the majority of previous studies.