Endoscopic Sinus Surgery for Sinonasal Polyposis: Microdebrider or Conventional Instruments.

INTRODUCTION: Sinonasal polyposis is one of the commonest causes of nasal obstruction. Surgical management is treatment of choice. Microdebrider offers more advantage to conventional instruments. We aimed to find out outcome using microdebrider versus conventional instruments in endoscopic sinus surgery of sinonasal polyposis.

METHODS: The cross sectional descriptive study carried out in patients aged 13 years and above with diagnosis of sinonasal polyposis. Total of 51 patients were operated on the right side with microdebrider and left side with conventional instruments. Postoperatively each patient assessed for nasal obstruction subjectively and by endoscopic examination to look for mucosal oedema, synechiae and recurrence at 4 weeks and 8 weeks postoperatively.

RESULTS: The incidence of mucosal oedema in microdebrider and conventional instruments at 4 weeks and 8 weeks was statistically not significant with P value 0.089, 0.322 respectively. The incidence of synechiae in conventional group was more than microdebrider 1 (2%) versus 4 (7.8%) at 4 weeks follow up but the difference was statistically not significant (P value 0.773). There were 2 (3.9%) recurrences in microdebrider group and 3 (5.8%) recurrences in conventional group with P value 0.532.

CONCLUSIONS: Use of microdebrider offered fewer incidences of synechiae and recurrence. But we couldn't find statistical advantage over conventional instruments.