Publication:

Correlation between nasal endoscopy and computed tomography in a tertiary care hospital

Background Chronic rhinosinusitis is associated with morbidity and affects the quality of life of the affected persons and increases their treatment costs. Diagnosis is mainly by nasal endoscopy or by computed tomography which is considered to be the gold standard.

Methods Nasal endoscopy was done for all the patients under local anaesthesia. All the patients also underwent computed tomography and paranasal sinuses and the findings were scored according to Lund Mackay scoring system.

Results The most common age group was 31-40 years and nasal discharge was the most common symptom seen in 82% of the patients. The paranasal sinuses that were involved were predominantly maxillary sinus in a total of 88% of the patients. 22% of the patients have sinusitis in the anterior ethmoid of the left nose and 20% on the right nose. Bilateral was seen in 22% of the cases. The sensitivity of nasal endoscopy over computed tomography was 95.6% while the specificity was 80%. The positive predictive value was 97.7% and the negative predictive value was 66.7%. The accuracy of the test was 94%.

Conclusions Nasal endoscopy is found to be as good as the computed tomography for the diagnosis of chronic rhinosinusitis and can be used on a regular basis for its detection among the patients. It not only lacks radiation but is also economically viable.