Academic institution pilot study shows far fewer diagnoses of sinusitis than reported nationally.

OBJECTIVE: To compare the prevalence of acute sinusitis (AS) and chronic sinusitis (CS) diagnosed by primary care and emergency medicine physicians in our academic institution to national data.

STUDY DESIGN: Cross-sectional pilot study of institutional census data and a population-based national sample. The setting was primary care and emergency departments at an academic healthcare institution and community healthcare practices nationally.

MATERIALS AND METHODS: We determined the proportion of adults visits at our institution for AS and CS from January 1, 2005, to December 31, 2010. We used the same parameters with the National Ambulatory Medical Care Survey and the National Hospital Ambulatory Medical Care Survey. As a control comparison, we determined the proportion of visits for epistaxis.

RESULTS: The sinusitis prevalence was considerably lower at our academic institution: all sinusitis (AS and CS combined) ranged from 0.8% to 1.0% at our institution compared to 3.1% to 3.7% nationally. There were very small differences between AS rates at the academic institution (0.7%-0.8%) and nationally (0.8%-1.4%, P  < 0.001) but very large differences between CS rates at the academic institution (0.1%) and national data (1.7%-2.9%, P  < 0.001). Epistaxis rates were nearly identical in both datasets (0.1%-0.2%, P  = 0.98-0.99).

CONCLUSION: The prevalence of CS is much lower at our academic institution, but the prevalence of AS and epistaxis are similar to national data. This suggests CS is over-diagnosed by primary care and emergency medicine providers and that CS diagnosed outside of an academic institution or a specialty clinic may not hold up to diagnostic scrutiny. For this reason, diagnostic and treatment protocols for CS that have been developed in academic specialty clinics should not be extrapolated to patients diagnosed with CS in the community setting. The most appropriate intervention for the majority of patients diagnosed with CS in primary care and emergency medicine may be education of providers and patients about conditions that may be misdiagnosed as CS.