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FRIDAY, Jan. 1 (HealthDay News) -- Three-quarters of patients undergoing surgery for stubborn sinusitis saw significant improvements in their quality of life, new research shows.
Most of the remaining 25 percent also saw some improvement, just not as dramatic, said Dr. Timothy Smith, lead author of a study appearing in the January issue of Otolaryngology -- Head and Neck Surgery.
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"Certainly this reinforces our belief that sinus surgery increases the quality of life of patients, and I see that clinically as well as scientifically," added Dr. Jordan S. Josephson, a sinus and allergy specialist at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York City. "Previous studies have been single-center studies, and this is a bigger study using multiple centers and using a fairly large population, so it further says sinus surgery is a really good thing to do if you need it."
Chronic rhinosinusitis (CRS) affects a sizable minority -- 14 percent to 16 percent -- of U.S. residents. The condition, marked by symptoms such as sinus pain and pressure, headache, stuffy nose and sneezing, can compromise quality of life more than even congestive heart failure, back pain or chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, the study authors said.
Endoscopic sinus surgery has been performed in the United States since the mid-1980s, said Smith, who is director of the Oregon Sinus Center at Oregon Health & Science University in Portland.
"It's a minimally invasive type of surgery performed with a telescope that goes into the nostril," then basically snips away abnormal and interfering tissue while leaving normal tissue behind, Smith explained.
Smith and his co-authors studied 302 patients with CRS from three academic medical centers, following them for an average of a year and a half after their surgery.
"These were patients who have chronic sinusitis so, by definition, they have at least three months of symptoms and they have evidence of an ongoing inflammation or infection of their nose and sinuses on either a CT scan or an examination of the nose and sinuses," Smith said.
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