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Endoscopic Sinus SurgeryJanuary 8, 2001
(NewsRx.com & NewsRx.net) -- Patients who undergo endoscopic sinus surgery still show signs of mucosal dysfunction three months after the operation, and should remain under close watch by physicians, researchers in Turkey suggest.
Writing in the journal Rhinology, S. Inanli and colleagues at Marmara University described the results of their study to "determine histologic findings in the maxillary sinus mucosa by scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and transsmission electron microscopy (TEM), and ciliary activity within the nasal cavity...before and after endoscopic sinus surgery."
Inanli et al. examined postoperative ultrastructural changes in 38 antral mucosae from 24 patients, along with six healthy controls ("The effect of endoscopic sinus surgery on mucociliary activity and healing of maxillary sinus mucosa," Rhinology, 2000;38(3):120-123).
The researchers found significant improvement in both macro- and microscopic features of the mucosae following surgery. The ciliated epithelium had regained many of the cilia lost prior to the procedure, the number of goblet cells had returned to near healthy levels, and cell interdigitation was more pronounced, study data showed.
A saccharin test, however, showed that the patients still lagged behind healthy controls in terms of mucociliary activity by a significant amount, despite marked postoperative improvement, according to the report.
"These obervations suggest that the histological, morphological and mucociliary activity of the mucosa have not yet improved completely, it takes more than 12 weeks to recover, and the patients should be closely monitored in the postoperative months," Inanli and colleagues concluded.
The corresponding author for this report is S. Inanli, Marmara University Hospital, Dept. of Otorhinolaryngology, TR-81190 Istanbul, Turkey.
Key points reported in this study include:
* Patients who undergo endoscopic sinus surgery still show signs of mucosal dysfunction three months after the operation, and should remain under close watch by physicians
* Patients did show significant improvement in most macro- and microscopic mucosal features after surgery
* However, mucociliary activity was still significantly degraded compared with healthy controls
This article was prepared by Health & Medicine Week editors from staff and other reports.
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