Quality of Life in Patients with Chronic Rhinosinusitis Before and After Functional Endoscopic Sinus Surgery at Tertiary Hospital, Tanzania

Abstract

Introduction: Chronic-rhino sinusitis is an inflammatory disorder of the Para nasal sinuses and linings of the nasal passages that lasts for 12 weeks or longer. Functional endoscopic sinus surgery (FESS) is a minimally invasive technique used to restore sinus ventilation and normal function hence it is the mainstay surgical treatment for chronic-rhino sinusitis. This disease affects the quality of life of patients but it has been reported that, FESS provides significant improvement on the QOL of patients. This study aim to assess whether Functional Endoscopic Sinus Surgery provides a better QOL in patients with CRS with or without polyposis in a tertiary Hospital, Tanzania. Also, it aims to determine the predictive factors influencing the QOL of these patients. Objective: To assess the quality of life of patients with chronic rhino-sinusitis with or without polyposis before and after FESS. Methodology: This is a hospital based before and after study where by patients diagnosed with CRS with or without polyposis planned for FESS were recruited. The SNOT-22 test was used to evaluate QOL. Data was collected before the surgery and 1 month after the surgery and analyzed using SPSS version 20.0 software. Result: 48 patients were enrolled in this study, 19 (39.6%) were male and 29 (60.4%) were female. The age range was 5-79 years with the mean age of 35 years. There was a statistically significant reduction between the preoperative and postoperative score attained on SNOT-22. (Z =-6.032, p = 0.000) The mean score of the preoperative score was 40.81 and the mean score of the postoperative score was 5.38. In this study there were 6 patients who had a history (past or present) of smoking, 6 patients who had Asthma and 11 patients with a previous history of FESS. Only a history of prior sinus surgery predicted poor quality of life after FESS. Conclusion: Functional Endoscopic Sinus Surgery is associated with increase in the quality of life of patients with CRS.