Posts Tagged ‘sinusitis’

Minimally invasive surgery is an effective and safe therapy for alleviating the pain and pressure of sinusitis for geriatric patients who do not find any benefit with medication alone, as per a research.

It was remarked by Dr. Stilianos E. Kountakis, otolaryngologist, vice chair of the Medical College of Georgia Department of Otolaryngology – Head and Neck Surgery and a principal author on the study published in the December issue of Otolaryngology – Head and Neck Surgery that the finding suggests that sinus problems should not be ignored in the elderly and there is a surgical method that is not that invasive and still provides good results.

From News-Medical.Net:

“We thought that maybe the endoscopic sinus surgery wouldn’t be as effective because of the decreased efficiency of the sinuses that naturally occurs with age, but that wasn’t the case. We thought maybe other medical problems, might make surgery less safe and effective, but that wasn’t the case either,” he says.

Instead they found 64 percent improvement in symptoms at three months, 73 percent improvement at six months and 75 percent improvement at 12 months, based on patient reports of their symptoms as well as physical exams.

Medical therapy, including inflammation-reducing steroids, mucus thinners and salt-water douches to moisturize and clean the sinuses, is always the first approach to treatment, Dr. Kountakis says. But after about a month, if the condition is no better, a surgical approach through the nose can be used to remove obstructions and/or widen sinus passages. Typically patients will continue to need some type of medicine following surgery to help keep their condition in check.

Dr. Kountakis and collaborators, led by Drs. J. Chris Colclasure and Charles W. Gross at the University of Virginia Health System found patients continuing to report improvements in symptoms over the year after surgery along with experiencing few minor complications and no major complications.

A protein acknowledged for stimulating growth of blood vessels was recently found as the reason behind overgrowth of cells in polyps’ development characterizing one of the most severe forms of sinusitis.

This finding was disclosed during a study by researchers from Johns Hopkins that was aimed at offering a new target for development of new therapies to treat disease form, which typically resists all current treatments.

From Sciencedaily.com:

Kim explains that surgery to remove the polyps is one of the most common treatments for this disease. However, nasal and sinus polyps in these patients almost always regrow. “Once the patient has entered the cycle of growing polyps, it’s very hard to get out,” she says. Another common treatment is oral steroids, but these drugs are fraught with many harmful side effects and also only temporarily treat the disease.

She and her Johns Hopkins colleagues have long studied sinusitis, often growing sinus cells isolated from patients in petri dishes. After noticing that cells from patients with polyps typically multiplied faster than cells from normal patients, the researchers speculated that cells from polyp patients might be producing extra amounts of some type of growth factor, a protein that encourages cell growth.

Jean Kim, M.D., Ph.D., assistant professor in the Departments of Otolaryngology and Allergy and Clinical Immunology at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, and a researcher at the Johns Hopkins Allergy and Asthma Center at the Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center, was of the view that this type of sinusitis is not subtle in nature.

Vascular endothelial growth factor, or VEGF, a protein important for normal blood vessel growth, is responsible for cell overgrowth in polyps’ development to characterize one of the most severe forms of sinusitis, as per researchers from the Johns Hopkins.

This finding by Johns Hopkins researchers is considered to provide a new target for developing new therapies in relation to treating this disease form, which generally resist all present treatment forms.

From Sciencedaily.com:

Kim explains that surgery to remove the polyps is one of the most common treatments for this disease. However, nasal and sinus polyps in these patients almost always regrow. “Once the patient has entered the cycle of growing polyps, it’s very hard to get out,” she says. Another common treatment is oral steroids, but these drugs are fraught with many harmful side effects and also only temporarily treat the disease.

She and her Johns Hopkins colleagues have long studied sinusitis, often growing sinus cells isolated from patients in petri dishes. After noticing that cells from patients with polyps typically multiplied faster than cells from normal patients, the researchers speculated that cells from polyp patients might be producing extra amounts of some type of growth factor, a protein that encourages cell growth.

This kind of sinusitis is not subtle and doctors can easily identify it by looking at patients from across the room, as per Jean Kim, M.D., Ph.D., assistant professor in the Departments of Otolaryngology and Allergy and Clinical Immunology at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, and a researcher at the Johns Hopkins Allergy and Asthma Center at the Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center.

The findings were published in the Dec. 1 American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine and highlighted on the fact that medical practitioners can treat sinusitis in patients with polyps by making use of therapies that minimize VEGF in sinus tissues.