Aaron Hartman, MDFunctional Medicine Specialist | Clinical Researcher

Tonsillectomy Prevents One Sore Throat Over Two Years — Cochrane Data From 2010 #shorts

1 Jul 2026 · 1 min

Watch on YouTube

1:17

In this YouTube short, Dr. Aaron Hartman cites a 2010 Cochrane review showing that a tonsillectomy only prevents roughly one sore throat over a two‑year span. He highlights that, despite this modest benefit, tonsillectomies once peaked at 1.4 million procedures per year in the United States, reflecting a historically entrenched practice based on common‑sense assumptions rather than solid evidence. Dr. Hartman frames this as a major medical blind spot—a systemic error that persisted for over half a century—and suggests that similar routine procedures may later be recognized as harmful. He notes that medical error may be the third leading cause of death in the country, urging viewers to scrutinize the healthcare system and share any perceived blind spots for further discussion.

Chapters

Getting your tonsils removed only prevents one sore throat over a 2-year period. Does that sound about right to you? Moving your tonsils— a tonsillectomy— will reduce your risk for a sore throat by one. You'll have one less sore throat over 2 years. This is what the Cochrane Database published in 2010. Yet doing this procedure was normal, peaking up to 1.4 million people getting a tonsillectomy in the country every year. Now it's much, much less. But the point is a minimal, a small procedure that got widely accepted. Why? It was thought that if they get sore, remove them. Common sense, right? Common sense is not common. And this was a major medical error, a blind spot in healthcare system that we did for over half a century. The question is, are there other procedures we're doing now routinely and commonly that we're gonna find out later cause harm psychologically, emotionally, mentally? There are some, we'll talk about those later. But the idea is, is you gotta watch out for healthcare systems, 'cause actually potentially medical error might be the third most common cause of death in our country. Think about that for a second. So minimizing your exposure to our healthcare system actually might save your life. If you feel like there's, you have, you know of a blind spot in our healthcare system, something that you think is just not quite right, share below. I'd love to hear your thoughts. And maybe we'll have a conversation about it.