Kartagener's syndrome. Preliminary report on cilia structure, function, and upper airway symptoms

Our study was designed to examine the motility and ultrastructure of cilia from the nose of patients with Kartagener's syndrome. Microphoto-oscillographic recording from single cells showed that the patients had in fact motile cilia, although the number was reduced. Asynchrony within the single cell was a more consistent feature. The first results of blind, quantitative microscopy showed the ultrastructural defects, described earlier, but the overlapping with a normal control group was considerable. Only one of nine patients had no dynein arms and completely immotile cilia; an observation which renders the term "the immotile-cilia syndrome" a misnomer. The ear-nose-throat symptoms were characterized by daily nose-blowings since birth, recurrent sinusitis, and chronic secretory otitis media. On the other hand, the frequency of acute purulent otitis media and of common colds appeared to be normal.