Clinical symptomes and method of diagnosis in patients with nasal and paranasal sinus malignancies: Retrospective analysis of a multicenter cohort

Introduction:

Malignancies of the nasal and paranasal sinuses often are manifested by nonspecific symptoms. In general, patients experience a delayed diagnosis after numerous medical consultations and different diagnostics. Due to the low incidence, only a few studies with a large number of cases are available.

Methods:

Retrospective analysis of the clinical data of patients with nasal and paranasal sinus malignancies from two clinical centers (University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf and Munich (LMU)) of the years 2008 – 2018. Differentiation was made between the type and duration of the clinical symptoms as well as the method of establishing the diagnosis.

Results:

In total 238 patients could be enrolled. The main complaints were nasal obstruction (32%), pain (28%), epistaxis (21%) and rhinorrhea (18%). 12% of patients had visual acuity disturbances with significant correlation to T status and prognosis. Less often there were externally visible puffiness/redness (10%), numbness (2.9%) or hyposmia (3.4%). The duration of the complaint until the diagnosis was on average 8.6 months. In 55.7% of patients the diagnosis was made by rhinoscopy, whereas in 24% of the patients it was unremarkable. An X-ray diagnosis was groundbreaking in 18.3%, but in 33.3% without pathological findings.

Conclusions:

In this cohort we could confirm the assumption of the diagnosis delay in this patient group. For largely unspecific symptoms, it usually takes several diagnostic tools to lead the patient to the diagnosis. If suspected harmless symptoms persist, an early ENT specialist examination should be carried out.

Publication History

Publication Date:
23 April 2019 (online)