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Therapeutic ultrasound as a treatment for chronic sinusitis
Author(s) -
Ansari Noureddin Nakhostin,
Naghdi Soofia,
Farhadi Mohammad
Publication year - 2004
Publication title -
physiotherapy research international
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.509
H-Index - 49
eISSN - 1471-2865
pISSN - 1358-2267
DOI - 10.1002/pri.315
Subject(s) - rehabilitation , medicine , medical education , library science , physical therapy , computer science
Chronic sinusitis is a disease that affects a significant percentage of the population and causes considerable long term morbidity (Brown et al., 1998). It is defined as a sinus infection that has persisted for longer than three months (Brown et al., 1998). Symptoms usually consist of nasal obstruction, facial fullness and nasal discharge. The cause of chronic sinusitis is multifactorial, with variation in the aetiology, bacteriology, stage of disease and treatment of the patient (Marks, 1998). Despite the use of modern antibiotics, recurrent and chronic sinusitis still cause signif icant morbidity in the general population (Forsgren et al., 1998). In fact, chronic sinusitis is acute sinusitis that has been treated unsuccessfully, resulting in ir reversible changes and oedema of the sinus mucosa (Brown et al., 1998). When repeated adequate courses of antibiotics fail to eradicate an underlying chronic infection or to return the sinus to normal, as judged by computerized tomography (CT) scan, the definitive treatment may be surgery (Lund and Kennedy, 1995) with removal of the diseased mucosa obstructing the sinus ostia to allow for improved sinus ventilation and drainage (Brown et al., 1998). Therapeutic ultrasound has been reported to be one of the treatment modalities that can be used in sinusitis (Kahn, 2000) but the literature is lacking on reports of its effect. The present paper describes the use of therapeutic ultrasound as a treatment for chronic sinusitis.