Effect of Patients' Expectations on Recovery from Acute Tonsillitis

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Abstract
To investigate whether the personal attention paid to a patient can affect his or her subjective recovery from acute tonsillitis, a controlled study was performed on 100 patients consulting a doctor for this disease. At the consultation a randomly assigned experimental group (n=50) was given more detailed information about the diagnosis, treatment and prognosis and also a more extensive physical examination than a control group (n=50). At a follow-up interview two days later significantly more of the experimental group felt that their symptoms had improved (PPP<0.001). A deliberate attempt to maximize the expectation effect was thus shown to influence the clinical course of acute tonsillitis, recorded as the degree of subjective improvement.

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