Abstract

Introduction: One of the major causes of chronic nasal obstruction is diseases of inferior turbinate commonly inferior turbinate hypertrophy, which sometimes do not respond to medical treatment and need surgery. Different surgical methods have been achieved for inferior turbinate hypertrophy e.g.: linear cautery, laser cautery, silver nitrate cautery, submucosal diathermy and inferior turbinate trimming. The principle of surgery is diminishing of the inferior turbinate size to decrease the patient’s complaint while preserving the function and anatomy of the nasal air passages. Aim of the work: The current study aims to compare the results in respect of safety and efficacy of sub-mucosal diathermy (SMD) versus partial surgical inferior turbinectomy (PSIT) in terms of postoperative improvement of nasal obstruction, nasal pain, degree of intra-nasal crustations and degree of tissue healing. Patients and Methods: fifty patients of different age groups and both sexes were involved in the study. Patients were divided in two groups (A and B), each group includes 25 patients. Group A had turbinate reduction through PSIT and group B had turbinate reduction through SMD. In both groups follow up was carried out after two weeks, one month and three months. Results and conclusion: The current study revealed that SMD is better than PSIT regarding the postoperative nasal pain and degree of intra-nasal crustations after 2 weeks and after 1 month of follow-up, but there was no statistically significant difference between both groups regarding the degree of nasal obstruction and tissue healing throughout the 3 months post-operative follow up period.

Keywords: Inferior turbinate, Sub-mucous diathermy, Surgicalturbinectomy