Usage of Absolute Neutrophil Count (ANC) as A Predictor for Acute Bacterial Tonsillitis in Adult Patients

Tonsillitis is a very common disease all over the world and it can be confusing to detect if it has bacterial or viral origin. In this study, it was aimed to investigate if absolute neutrophil count (ANC) can be used as a predictor to display acute bacterial tosillitis.42 patients with the complaints of sore throat, fever and odynophagia were examined by the physician between May 2015 and May 2016. Supporting blood tests and throat cultures were performed and ANC was calculated for all patients individually before the initiaiton of treatment. White blood cell count (WBCC) and ANC were significantly higher in 26 patients with positive throat culture (p<0.001). Moreover, it was detected that ANC ≥ 6.82 was able to predict positive culture results with %92.3 sensitivity and %93.7 specificity which was also statistically significant (p<0.001).According to this, ANC can be used as an easy, fast and reliable predictor for acute bacterial tonsillitis with high sensitivity and specifity. In this sense, patients with high ANC can be treated with antibiotics without waiting for culture results