Role of Peak Nasal Inspiratory Flow for Measuring the Effectiveness of Surgery in Children with Adenoidal Hypertrophy

Objective Nasal airway obstruction in children is a frequent problem in otolaryngology practice. Adenoidal hypertrophy (AH) is the most common pathology in childhood that requires surgery. Nasal patency can be evaluated by subjective and objective methods. Unlike other methods, peak nasal inspiratory flow (PNIF) is portable and easy to perform. The need for patient compliance is the most important disadvantage of this method. We aimed to analyze the significance of PNIF for measuring the effectiveness of adenoidectomy as well as to compare PNIF with other subjective methods. Methods Two-hundred forty-five (245) patients aged between six and 11 years were evaluated. Seventy-seven (77) of them formed the study group and 168 formed the control group. Pre and post-surgery PNIF measurements, adenoid scores, and simple visual analog scale (sVAS) were recorded. Results The average PNIF value has significantly increased to 70.65 L/min from 33.02 L/min after adenoidectomy (p<0.01). The average PNIF value was 71.66 L/min in control subjects. High PNIF values were significantly correlated with low sVAS and adenoid scores postoperatively in the study group as compared with those of preoperative data (p<0.01). Conclusions PNIF has a satisfying correlation with nasal examination findings and other subjective methods to evaluate nasal obstruction and may provide unique and complementary information helpful for evaluating and improving the effects of adenoidectomy in children.