Eustachian Tube Quality of Life and Severity of Disease in Patients With Chronic Rhinosinusitis

Abstract

Background: Chronic rhinosinusitis (CRS) has long been a suspected risk factor for Eustachian tube dysfunction (ETD). However, there have been few studies quantifying the presence of ETD in CRS patients. We sought to determine the prevalence of ETD symptoms in patients undergoing functional endoscopic sinus surgery (FESS) for CRS using the validated 7-item Eustachian Tube Dysfunction Questionnaire (ETDQ-7) and to correlate the ETDQ-7 scores with scores of CRS symptom severity based on the 22-item Sino-Nasal Outcome Test (SNOT-22).

Methods: Patients for FESS were preoperatively administered both the ETDQ-7 and the SNOT-22 validated quality of life instruments. Pearson and Spearman correlation coefficients were calculated. Changes in ETDQ-7 were measured at 3 months and differences were compared via paired t test.

Results: A total of 82 patients completed the surveys. Thirty-nine (47.6%) patients had ETDQ-7 score ≥14.5, signifying clinically significant ETD symptoms. The mean ETDQ-7 score of the study population was 15.8 ± 8.8, and the mean SNOT-22 score was 37.5 ± 19.7. The Pearson and Spearman correlation coefficients between ETDQ-7 and the total SNOT-22 score were 0.52 (P > .0001) and 0.51 (P < .0001), respectively. There was significant improvement in ETDQ-7 scores postoperatively.

Conclusion: While the association between ETD and CRS has long been known, this is one of the few prospective patient studies evaluating otologic symptoms in a CRS population. We found that a significant percentage of CRS patients suffer from ETD symptoms based on patient-reported subjective outcome measures. This study demonstrates that otologic symptoms increase with CRS severity and improve after FESS.

Keywords: ETDQ-7; Eustachian tube dysfunction; SNOT-22; chronic rhinosinusitis; ear disease; ear fullness; ear pressure; otologic symptoms; quality of life; sinusitis.