The effect of functional endoscopic sinus surgery on patients with asthma and CRS with nasal polyps

Aim: To study the effect of functional endoscopic sinus surgery (FESS) in patients with chronic rhinosinusitis (CRS) and nasal polyps (NP) with concomitant asthma. Design: The study was designed to evaluate prospectively whether FESS can influence parameters of asthma in patients with CRS with nasal polyps. Methods and results: One hundred thirty seven patients were recruited from the ENT-Allergy and Panedoscopy Clinic of the ENT Department. All selected patients underwent medical therapy for CRS and NP for 12 weeks, and in case of no improvement, they proceeded to surgical treatment. They also underwent pre- and post-treatment subjective and objective measurements for CRS and asthma. In the study, 86 patients were finally evaluated who completed the protocol and were followed up for a period of 12 months. The patients showed statistically significant improvement of the objective measurements for asthma, from baseline to six and twelve months follow-up. No significant increase was found in the proportion of patients with well or very well overall asthma-control during the follow-up period. There was a clear improvement in the use of bronchodilators, oral steroids and need for hospitalization for asthma. Conclusions: Obviously, there is a link between CRS with NP and asthma. The data analysis of our study supports the hypothesis that FESS could have beneficial effect on both diseases improving objective and subjective measurements.