Keywords: tonsils, adenoids hipertrophy, recurrent tonsillitis, chronic tonsillitis

Abstract: In order to define if some characteristics as lymphoid tissue hyperplasia, distension of the crypts, keratin cysts and papillary arrangenlent can give the diagnosis chronic tonsillitis, we performed histopathological study of 126 tonsils excised by surgery. Sixty nine cases, with surgery indication were tonsils and adenoid hypertrophy (T&AH), without acute recurrent tonsiflitis, and 57 ca of recurrent tonsillitis (RT). We analysed the above mentioned characteristics of chronic tonsillitis considering the presence or not of the recurrent infection. There were no significant difference within the two groups (RT and T&AH) and the findings can be found in many group, different ages with or without recurrent infection although they are more frequent in the group with recurrent infection. We conclude that we are unable to diagnose chronic tonsillitis, but only to make a good description of the histopathological findings, considering the knowledge of tonsillar recent phisiopathology.