Identifying the most important outcomes for systematic reviews of interventions for rhinosinusitis in adults: working with Patients, Public and Practitioners

Abstract

We have identified outcomes that both patients and their doctors consider should be included in reviews evaluating treatments of rhinosinusitis. We recommend that primary outcomes in future reviews focus on symptom-based outcomes. The ability to extract these data from relevant trials is dependent upon their inclusion in trials, and so it is important that building on this work a core outcome set for rhinosinusitis research is developed.

Developing a core outcome set for chronic rhinosinusitis: a systematic review of outcomes utilised in the current literature

“…This produced an extensive list, with multiple OMIs used to measure individual outcomes (Table 2). We employed the categories identified as part of the OMIPP project (previously discussed in the ‘Methods’ section), using them to map our outcomes and OMIs, as appropriate [17]. Hence, our long-list was mapped onto 23 predetermined ‘core categories’, belonging to eight ‘main categories’, namely ‘Changes in patient-related symptom severity’, ‘Quality of life’, ‘Physiological assessments’, ‘Microbiological’, ‘Biomarkers’, ‘Lower airway disease’, ‘Side effects’ and ‘Acceptability of treatment’ (Table 3).…”

“…In order to overcome the two limitations discussed, the outcomes obtained through this review, will be combined with (a) outcomes obtained through patient focus groups, (b) outcomes obtained through Public, Patient and Practitioner surveys [17] and (c) outcomes obtained through interviews with family practitioners and otolaryngologists. It is this final long-list of outcomes, representing all stakeholders, that will be used in the development of a COS via the Delphi process [12, 19].…”

Objective and subjective assessment of outcomes after sinus surgery in sixty patients

“…The subscores for secondary rhinogenic symptoms and quality of life also improved significantly. As primary nasal symptoms are considered as the most bothering symptoms of CRS, we observed their role in predicting surgical success more precisely. In this context, we found that with a higher class of severity of PNS preoperatively, there is an increased improvement due to surgery.…”

Blocked noses

“…Nasal obstruction is one of the most common reasons that patients visit their doctors, general practitioners and otorhinolaryngologists alike and has a significant impact on the quality of life of patients (5,6) . Blockage is an important outcome of disease not only in nasal disease (7)(8)(9) , but also in rhinosinusitis (10) .…”