HONEY for the Treatment of POst-Tonsillectomy Pain

Tonsillectomy is one of the most common surgical procedures performed in the UK. It can be a painful operation to recover from, particularly in adults. Amongst the recognised complications, poor oral intake secondary to uncontrolled pain can result in re-admission to hospital, development of localized infection and subsequent bleeding. Post-operative analgesia regimes can vary depending on the individual surgeon preference or departmental policies, however generally it involves regular simple analgesics including paracetamol, ibuprofen and topical analgesic throat sprays or rinses. Commonly, opioid based analgesics such as codeine, tramadol and oramorph are needed in the post-operative period. Whilst these are generally effective, they can be associated with significant side effects such as constipation, drowsiness and nausea and prolonged use is not recommended.

Beehive products such as honey and propolis have been mentioned as wound dressings in ancient writings across the world, thousands of years before the advent of modern medicine. Honey is a by-product of flower nectar produced in the aero-digestive tract of bees and propolis is produced from plant resins, enriched with salivary enzymatic secretions. Honey has been shown to possess anti-bacterial and anti-inflammatory properties. Manuka honey is a mono-floral honey with potential wound repair and antibacterial activities. It is produced by bees fed on the flowers of the New Zealand Manuka bush (Leptospermum scoparium) and contains a significantly higher concentration of the 1,2-dicarbonyl compound methylglyoxal, which may account for its antibacterial activity. Manuka honey has been reported to stimulate the formation of new blood capillaries and the growth of fibroblasts and epithelial cells when applied topically to wounds. It is now part of the routine armamentarium of products used in the treatment of burns and external skin wounds in NHS Plastic surgery departments in the United Kingdom (UK). The clinical efficacy of Manuka honey in the oral and oropharyngeal cavities is controversial and quality, placebo controlled, randomized clinical trials are lacking. There are a number of systematic reviews that have described some benefit of Manuka honey in the treatment of radiation induced oro-mucositis, particularly in reducing treatment interruptions, preventing weight loss and pain control.

The most recent PROSPECT (Procedure-specific postoperative pain management) guideline for tonsillectomy published in 2021 in the Anaesthesia journal, represented an international, multidisciplinary collaborative effort providing recommendations on the most effective pain management following tonsillectomy. The fourth of five summative recommendations, based on systematic review of the current literature, is that analgesic adjuncts such as postoperative honey is recommended. Honey could provide significant improvements in post-operative pain scores as well as provide opioid-sparing benefits. This is a powerful mandate for further research into the routine clinical usage of honey as an adjunct to post-tonsillectomy pain management. To date there have not been any placebo controlled, randomised clinical trials comparing the effectiveness of oral honey in post-tonsillectomy pain control in the UK.

The aim of this double-blind, randomised, placebo controlled clinical trial is to compare the effect of Manuka honey with standard of care compared to placebo with standard of care on post-tonsillectomy pain and postoperative outcomes. The hypothesis is that the addition of Manuka honey to standard of care will result in a significant reduction in post-tonsillectomy pain scores compared to the placebo control. The null hypothesis is that there is no significant difference between Manuka honey compared to placebo in post-tonsillectomy pain scores.

The primary endpoint/outcome are daily pain scores measured via Visual Analogue Scale (VAS). This is a continuous variable, which will be measured and recorded three times a day, every day for the first 14 days post-tonsillectomy.

The secondary endpoint/outcomes include the number and frequency of concurrent analgesia usage, the rate of readmission to hospital, the rate of secondary haemorrhage, the rate of infection requiring antibiotics treatment, the speed of return to work. These are a mixture of continuous and ordinal variables and will be collected retrospectively.