Effects of Bilateral Nasal Packing on Oxygen Saturation and Blood Pressure

Nasal packing is one of the most common rhinological procedures in ENT practice exerting local in nose and systemic effects. Systemic effects may be due to poor sleep quality, respiratory difficulty, decreased oxygen saturation, circulatory problems and toxic shock syndrome which can threaten the life of a person.The study was done to investigate the effect on bilateral nasal packing on blood oxygen saturation and blood pressure changes.

A cross-sectional prospective study was undertaken in Kathmandu Medical College from January 2017 to June 2017. The ethical approval was taken from institutional review committee of KMC and verbal consent was taken from each patient. Thirty patients were included in the study by simple randomized sampling. The association between nasal packing and oxygen saturation and blood pressure was done using ANNOVA and Fisher Exact test. P value of <0.005 was considered statistically significant. SPSS version 20 for windows OS was used for analysis.

Blood oxygen saturation on four different days was compared using ANNOVA and paired sample tests. It showed a significant dip on the day of bilateral nasal packing compared to other readings (P value <0.001). Likewise, systolic and diastolic blood pressures showed a significant rise on the day of bilateral nasal packing compared to readings on other days (P value <0.001).

Bilateral nasal packing can lead to significant rise in systolic and diastolic blood pressure and a dip in blood oxygen saturation. Thus care has to be taken while performing bilateral nasal packing in normal patients but much more in high risk patients.