Sinusitis

What is Sinusitis?

Sinusitis or Rhinosinusitis is an inflammatory condition involving the sinuses of the nose. There are four paranasal sinuses and the order of frequency of these sinuses which involve in Rhinosinusitis are Maxillary sinus, the most commonly involved. It is followed by Ethmoid sinus, Frontal sinus and Sphenoid sinus.

What happens in Sinusitis?

The function of the sinus is to produce mucus and drain it into the nasal cavity. Normally, mucus does not accumulate in the sinuses. There are ciliary muscles and nasal ostia(the opening) which help in the process of easy drainage of the mucus secreted. It is only when the sinus ostia are obstructed or when ciliary clearance is impaired or absent, the mucus secretions can be retained. This accumulation of mucus produces the typical signs and symptoms of sinusitis.

Further, with the accumulation of these secretions due to obstruction , they become vulnerable to infection which may be bacterial , viral and fungi.

Sinusitis is a disease which is very commonly seen affecting vast proportion of population and it is thus amounting to high costs on medical care system.

What are the types of Sinusitis?

Sinusitis is typically studied based on duration of illness, whether acute sinusitis or chronic sinusitis;By the causative factor, whether infectious or noninfectious; and when infectious, by the type of pathogen, whether viral , bacterial or fungal.

Acute Sinusitis: When the symptoms of sinusitis are of less than 4 weeks duration, it is defined as acute rhinosinusitis and majority of sinusitis cases are of this type. Mostly, a preceding viral upper respiratory infection is the reason for acute sinusitis.

What are the symptoms of Sinusitis?

The common symptoms of acute sinusitis are nasal drainage, congestion of nose, facial pain and headache. The pain on pressure or sinus pain often is felt on the area of the sinus involved and it gets worse on bending over. Thick purulent or discolored discharge from the nose is indicative of bacterial sinusitis but can also occur along with viral infection.

Other less common symptoms of acute sinusitis are cough, sneezing and fever. Tooth pain( in upper molars) and bad breath(halitosis) are common in bacterial sinusitis.

The noninfectious reasons for sinusitis include allergic rhinitis, barotrauma( air pressure changes in the nose as in deep-sea diving or air travel) and exposure to chemical irritants.

Obstruction of nasal ostia can also occur due to tumors. Impaired mucus clearance can be the result of cystic fibrosis.

In infectious type of sinusitis, viral sinusitis is more common than bacterial sinusitis, particularly, rhinovirus, influenza virus and parainfluenza virus.

What are the symptoms of Chronic sinusitis?

Chronic sinusitis : When sinusitis symptoms are persisting for more than 12 weeks is called a chronic sinusitis condition. Most of the times, the symptoms include those of bacterial or fungal sinusitis. In those patients, there is a positive history of undergoing various treatments and surgeries and also recurrence.

The repeated infections is found to be the reason for chronic sinusitis.

The symptoms of chronic sinusitis are constant nasal congestion, sinus pressure, headache, severity of the complaints and the symptoms persist for months.

The treatment of sinusitis should be aimed at removing obstruction in the nasal sinuses and promote drainage of mucus. At Positive Homeopathy, a complete examination is done of the sinuses and the total number of symptoms recorded by the experienced doctors. Along with the nature of symptoms , the constitution of the patient suffering from sinusitis is ascertained. Such a mode of approach to a case of sinusitis has yielded successful results in the patients who have taken treatment at Positive Homeopathy Clinics.

What is the treatment for Sinusitis?

The benefits of taking homeopathic treatment for sinusitis at Positive Homeopathy includes avoidance of surgery if advised. Homeopathic medicines selected for the best treatment of sinusitis works deep enough to remove the causative factors responsible for sinusitis and reverses the pathology which causes sinusitis which is required to avoid surgery.The treatment can be started at home and there is no need of hospitalisation.

Another greater aspect achieved by taking homeopathic treatment for sinusitis is preventing the recurrence of sinusitis which is more responsible for turning acute sinusitis into chronic sinusitis.