[Operative therapy in chronic sinusitis - results in allergic and nonallergic patients]

65 patients suffering from relapsing sinusitis were observed postoperatively over the course of 2 to 22 years. Of the total, 31 patients had allergies and 15 of them had undergone immunotherapy. The remaining 16 of the allergic group had been treated symptomatically. 34 patients had no allergies. The results show that the treatment of allergic sinusitis with hyposensitization offers a better prognosis in the long run. Surgery can be kept at a minimum, and recurrence of the sinusitis is rarer. Non-allergic patients had by no means such good postoperative prognoses. The extent of the operation was greater than in their allergic counterparts and subsequent operations were more often necessary. Radical operation of the maxillary sinus (after Caldwell-Luc) does not yield a substantially better postoperative result than inferior meatal antrostomy. If the windows in the lateral wall of the meatus inferior close postoperatively, the mucous membrane does regress in 50% of the cases. A closed window is not necessarily a sign of a poor operative result.