Clinical experience and treatment approaches in sinonasal osteomas from a Tertiary Care Hospital in Turkey

Osteomas are slow-growing benign osseous tumors that particularly located in the paranasal sinuses (PS). Here, we aimed to define the clinical symptoms and features, diagnostic conditions caused by osteomas located in four different PSs, to evaluate the surgical indications and methods, to compare the factors that can affect the surgical decision, radiological findings, and prognosis.

The data of patients with paranasal sinus lesions and diagnosed as osteoma according to the radiological imaging, who applied to our clinic between 2010 and 2020, were retrospectively collected and re-evaluated in the light of clinical, radiological, and pathological data. Patients who underwent surgical treatments and were definitively diagnosed as osteoma by pathology were enrolled in this study.

We presented the data of 117 patients retrospectively. Most of these cases (n = 77, 65.8%) had an osteoma located in the frontal sinus, while 32 cases (27.4%) had osteoma in the ethmoid, two cases (1.7%) had in sphenoid and six cases (5.1%) had in maxillary sinus. We found that the presence of symptoms, diameter of osteoma, surgical indications including state of sinus drainage, and chronic/recurrent sinusitis influence the choices of physicians in management of frontal sinus osteomas. Moreover, we found a significant correlation between the grading systems defined to classify the frontal sinus osteoma to be operated (r = 0.878, 95% CI: 0.724-0.949, P<0.0001).

There are several grading systems useful for the choice of surgical approaches, however, the clinical symptoms and surgical indications should not be neglected in the follow-up of patients with frontal sinus osteoma. If there are concerns about the grade of osteoma and the endoscopic approach is considered not to be sufficient for resection, the surgical procedure may be initiated endoscopically, and, if necessary, it can be combined with an external approach.