Quality of life before and after sinonasal surgery: a population-based matched cohort study

A population-based matched cohort study was conducted to explore how the quality of life (QoL) changes in patients with septal deviation or recurrent/chronic rhinosinusitis after septoplasty (SP) and endoscopic sinus surgery (ESS). We also compared the QoL of the surgical cohort with that of a concurrently collected healthy cohort. We collected data on QoL in a population-based surgical cohort of 160 patients residing in one health care district (population 405,000) in Northern Finland, and in a control cohort comprised of 206 age- and sex-matched randomly selected subjects residing in Finland (population 5,470,000). QoL was assessed at entry and 12 months later with the Sino-Nasal Outcome Test-22 (SNOT-22) and the RAND-36 generic instruments. Seventy-six SP and 84 ESS patients and 206 controls were enrolled. At entry, the mean SNOT-22 scores of the SP and ESS groups were similar (34.9 and 35.1, respectively) and both were significantly worse than the control group (17.7). At 12 months, the mean SNOT-22 score had improved after SP [change 15.7, 95 % confidence interval (CI) 11.4-19.9] and ESS (change 18.0, 95 % CI 12.4-20.9) and almost reached that of the control group, which remained unchanged. The benefit was similar regardless of the surgical indication. At 12 months, mean RAND-36 scores had improved in most domains in both patient groups and remained unchanged in the controls. After appropriate surgical criteria, both SP and ESS are effective in enhancing QoL on the population level, and postoperative QoL almost reaches the level of the control population.