Chronic Maxillary Sinusitis: A comparison of osteological and CT methods of diagnosis

To assess the differences between endoscopic and radiological methods of analysis for diagnosing chronic maxillary sinusitis (CMS) in archaeological skeletal remains. 32 crania from a Dutch post-medieval rural population. We assessed the presence of bone changes indicative of CMS (i.e., bone growth and bone resorption) both endoscopically and through computed tomography (CT), and then compared results. We observed moderate agreement between bone growth scores obtained through endoscopy and CT, and fair agreement when assessing bone resorption. CMS prevalence rates observed through CT may be comparable to rates assessed endoscopically, although caution is needed when making direct comparisons. This is the first study comparing data obtained through endoscopy and radiological methods in the study of CMS, informing paleopathologists about potential biases in data comparison. Our small sample size likely impacted results. Further research is advised to fully explore the comparability of endoscopic and radiological method of analysis in the study of sinusitis. The datasets generated and analyzed during the current study are available upon request.