To assess the treatment of hypertrophy of inferior turbinates in patients with chronic nasal obstruction with the use of radiofrequency volumetric tissue reduction technique. Ablation with radiofrequency was used in this study on the inferior turbinates of 240 patients with chronic nasal obstruction at our hospital between December 2015 and December 2017. The results were evaluated subjectively by changes in pre and post-operative symptoms, size of inferior turbinate, postoperative pain and assessment of Eustachian tube function by looking at retraction of tympanic membrane. In our study nasal obstruction, nasal discharge, sneezing, snoring, hyposmia improved in 86%, 93%, 90.2%, 33%, 60% respectively at the end of 1 month and symptoms further improved to 95 %, 100%, 90%, 91%, 100% at the end of 1 year. Similarly 35 % patients showed reduction in turbinate in first 7 days and 80 % of the reduction of inferior turbinate took place at the end of 1 month. Further improvement was seen at the end of 3 month, approximately 95 % patients showed reduction of inferior turbinate. And no significant difference was seen between 6 month and 12 months. Post-operatively 80% of patients with grade 1 and grade 2 tympanic membrane retractions showed improvement. On the contrary no improvement was seen in patients with grade 3 and 4 retractions.

These results suggests that radiofrequency volumetric tissue reduction of inferior turbinate is an easily applied, efficient and reliable technique in the treatment of hypertrophied inferior turbinate in chronic nasal obstruction patients.

Keywords: Radiofrequency ablation, inferior turbinate, tympanic membrane retraction, nasal obstrcution.

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Pulkit Khandelwal