Tonsillectomy – surgical removal of the tonsils –before the age of 20 raised the odds of a heart attack before the age of 47 by 44%.
People who had an appendectomy were at 33% greater risk than people who had not.
However, the chances of a heart attack were small even among those who had undergone the operations in childhood and the researchers said parents should not be worried.
Professor Imre Janszky, lead author of the study, said: “So far what we have found is the risk of a premature heart attack is very rare.The risk of them just increases a bit.”
A team from the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm monitored the national health records of millions of Swedish residents for an average of 23 years.
Among them were more than 27,284 people whose tonsils had been removed and 54,449 who had undergone appendectomies before the age of 20. Of these, 89 of the appendectomy group and 47 of the tonsillectomy group had an acute myocardial infarction, or heart attack, before the age of 47.
Their likelihood of suffering an attack was compared with that of randomly chosen “controls” who had not undergone tonsil or appendix operations.
Studies suggest between 10% and 20% of all young people have their tonsils or appendix removed, usually because of infections.
Both organs are part of the body’s immune system.
The findings were published yesterday in the European