Comparison of Surgical Technique for Opening the Frontal Sinus Drainage Pathway of Patients with Eosinophilic Chronic Rhinosinusitis Undergoing ESS

This is the authors' abstract. We don't add key points for this paper.

Eosinophilic chronic rhinosinusitis (ECRS) is a refractory and recurrent disease and its prevalence has been increasing. ECRS recurrence is known to be associated with the early development of frontal recess polyps after endoscopic sinus surgery (ESS). We found it challenging to address recurrent frontal sinus opacification early after surgery at our department. Consequently, in August 2018, we modified our technique for opening the frontal sinus drainage pathway (FSDP), introduced the building block concept, and changed the surgical instruments used for opening the FSDP. Our present study included 32 patients with ECRS who underwent type IV ESS at our department between March 2016 and October 2020; the patients were divided into two groups: group A and group B, comprising patients who underwent ESS before and after August 2018, respectively. To evaluate the effects of the changes, we retrospectively compared the operative time, degree of patency of the frontal recess, computed tomography (CT) score improvement rate (IR), and peripheral blood eosinophil percentage between the two groups.