BMJ 1995;311:1022 (14 October)

Letters

Trial was wrong to ignore other sinuses

EDITOR,--Jens Georg Hansen and colleagues' paper on predicting acute maxillary sinusitis in a general practice population misses the opportunity to clarify how many patients presenting with acute sinus symptoms actually have sinusitis.1 The authors make the mistake of concerning themselves solely with the maxillary sinus, giving no data on the presence of disease in the other sinuses, ethmoid, frontal, or sphenoid. The maxillary sinus is of no special importance compared with the other sinuses, and there is no reason to focus on it; on the contrary, it has been thought for many years that the maxillary sinus, as a "dependent" sinus, is infected secondary to disease in the ethmoid.2

The authors found no association between maxillary sinusitis and sinus symptoms, but we do not know how many of the patients had disease in the other sinuses. All the authors' conclusions are therefore rendered invalid--most importantly, the implication that general practitioners . . . [Full text of this article]


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Relevant Article

Predicting acute maxillary sinusitis in a general practice population
Jens Georg Hansen, Henrik Schmidt, Jorn Rosborg, and Elisabeth Lund
BMJ 1995 311: 233-236. [Abstract] [Full Text]

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