Does the severity of sinus computed tomography findings predict outcome in chronic sinusitis?
OBJECTIVES: We studied the association between the severity of pretreatment CT scan findings and the improvement in symptoms of chronic sinusitis after treatment. METHODS: We analyzed data from an ongoing prospective, nonrandomized clinical outcomes study of patients treated for chronic sinusitis at a tertiary-care academic medical center (n = 57, mean age 46.8 years). Disease-specific symptom severity was measured with a validated health status instrument, and CT stage was quantified with the Harvard CT staging system. RESULTS: In a multivariate analysis, symptom severity based on CT findings emerged as a strong predictor of both improvement in symptom score outcome (beta = 0.47, P = 0.01) and absolute symptom level after treatment (beta = -0.58, P = 0.001). CONCLUSIONS: Severity as assessed by a pretreatment CT scan is a strong predictor of outcome. Patients with higher symptom severity based on CT scans showed significantly larger improvement and lower absolute levels of symptom sev
