However, the 13-month-old boy’s face was engulfed in a fireball when a surgeon activated an electrocautery device — a sort of electric scalpel — while an anesthesiologist administered concentrated oxygen through a face mask.

Open prostatectomy also offers the advantages of tactile feedback; greater access to the surgical field; less need for electrocautery that burns tissues; and absence of concern about equipment failure or inadvertent tissue injury.

Some may choose to undergo surgery to reduce the size of the swollen mucosal membranes, but procedures such as cold knife surgery and electrocautery often cause pain, bleeding and other side effects.

In a previous clinical trial, the researchers found that children randomly assigned to undergo the microdebrider procedure healed faster and returned to a normal diet more quickly than those who had electrocautery.

The microdebrider technique is technically more difficult than electrocautery, Derkay noted, and most surgeons today were predominately trained in the latter.