Evaluation of variations with paranasal computer tomography in patients with chronic sinusitis

Sinonasal region is very important in the diagnosis and treatment of paranasal sinus diseases. It is one of the regions where anatomical variations are common in humans, and these variations play a role as an effective factor in the pathogenesis of sinus inflammation. Computed tomography (CT) is the examination method that shows the anatomy and pathology of the paranasal sinuses at the highest level. In addition to its superior success in demonstrating mucosal pathologies, CT provides clinicians with a high advantage in terms of detecting anatomical variations and pathologies that can predispose to chronic sinusitis and cannot be detected on direct radiographs, sometimes even in nasal endoscopy. In the examination of the paranasal sinuses, sections are taken in the axial and coronal planes. Coronal plane; It gives important information about the normal anatomy of the paranasal sinus and its anatomical variations, acute and chronic sinus infections, their etiology and complications, the differential diagnosis of tumors and their spread to the surrounding compartments. In this study, the images of 204 patients who underwent paranasal sinus CT between January 2012 and January 2016 in the ENT Clinic of EBYU Mengücek Training and Research Hospital were evaluated retrospectively. It was aimed to determine the incidence of anatomical variations in the paranasal sinuses in cases with chronic sinusitis using CT imaging. When all the cases in the study were evaluated in terms of anatomical variations, the most common anatomical variations were septum deviation (73%), pterygoid process pneumatization (53.1%), concha bullosa (44.1%), and the rarest septal pneumatization was 1%. As a result of the data obtained, there was no general relationship between anatomical variations and gender. There are no definite results in the literature about the prevalence of anatomical variations in the paranasal sinuses. We think that the differences in the results obtained in this retrospective study are due to genetic, gender and racial differences. While planning future studies to determine the prevalence of the anatomical variations of the paranasal sinuses, it is multicenter that the number of cases is kept large; We believe that CT evaluations are made on coronal and axial sections and the data obtained from these should be supported by endoscopic evaluation.