About one in every fifteen thousand tonsillectomies ends in death, either from the anesthesia or from bleeding to death five to seven days after the operation.
The death rate from the disease used to be as high as 50-60%. Better, faster methods of diagnosis have allowed earlier identification of the disorder, allowing the death rate to drop to 30-35%.
For most forms of Influenza with no pre-existing health problems, the mortality rate is less than a quarter of a percent, or about 1 in 400. Cause of death is mostly due to respiratory failure,...