Is It Safe to Cauterise Both Sides of the Nasal Septum at the Same Time in Children With Nosebleeds?
Funding: The authors received no specific funding for this work.
ABSTRACT
Objective
It is often recommended that, in children with bilateral epistaxis, only one side of the nasal septum should be cauterised at a time in order to reduce the risk of septal perforation. This advice may have been reasonable when hot wire electrocautery was in common use. The risk of septal perforation after silver nitrate cautery is unknown but probably low.
Methods
Retrospective case note review of children attending the nurse-led epistaxis clinic between 2019 and 2022.
Results
Nine hundred and twenty children were seen in the nurse-led clinic between January 2019 and December 2022. Six hundred and one children (79%) underwent nasal cautery. Simultaneous bilateral nasal cautery was carried out in 176 (29%) children. Our follow up period ranged between 303 and 1744 days, with a median of 809.5 days. No child presented to emergency or ENT services with septal perforation or any other complication of simultaneous bilateral nasal cautery.
Conclusion
To the author's knowledge, this is the largest study assessing the safety of simultaneous bilateral nasal cautery with silver nitrate in children. No adverse results have been found after cauterising both sides of the septum at the same sitting, and doing so potentially saves time and money for patients and the health service.
Conflicts of Interest
The authors declare no conflicts of interest.
Open Research
Data Availability Statement
The data that support the findings of this study are available on request from the corresponding author. The data are not publicly available due to privacy or ethical restrictions.
