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The study I think you are citing was a very limited study among adult patients in VA hospitals who had sleep apnea who got UPPV surgery alone and not with a tonsillectomy. Tonsillectomies have a mortality rate of around 2% to 4%.

You're confusing morbidity and mortality. The morbidity rate for tonsillectomy is 2% to 4%. (That's the rate of complications or illness following the surgery.) The mortality (death) rate is far, far lower - only 1 in 15,000.

OTOH, the morbidity rate for UPPP is higher, but the mortality rate is very low, which suggests that the vast majority of patients with UPPP complications survive.

And, no, the UPPP studies I'm citing were not small. In post #19, I linked to the article. Here's the link again. Here's what the article says:

A review of 3,572 patients treated with uvulopalatopharyngoplasty revealed the incidence of serious complications to be 37.1 per 1,000 patients. The most common complications were postoperative hemorrhage and infections; there were no perioperative or postoperative deaths. A similar study of 3,130 patients found an incidence of nonfatal complications of 1.5% and a 30-day mortality rate of 0.2%.

This tragedy should not have happened.