Prevalencia de hipertrofia de cornetes refractaria al tratamiento farmacológico en pacientes con rinitis alérgica del Hospital IESS Los Ceibos en el periodo 2022 - 2023.

Abstract

The turbinates are bony nasal structures whose function is to direct, humidify, and warm the inspired air. Turbinate hypertrophy is an enlargement of these structures due to inflammation of their mucosa, with allergic rhinitis being the main etiology. It can be classified into 4 grades according to the percentage of nasal light obstruction, which produces the most characteristic symptom: nasal obstruction. The pharmacological treatment generally used to treat turbinate hypertrophy due to allergic rhinitis consists of intranasal corticosteroids and oral antihistamines, however many patients report not obtaining beneficial results with this treatment. The present research aims to determine the prevalence of turbinate hypertrophy refractory to pharmacological treatment in patients with allergic rhinitis at Los Ceibos IESS Hospital during the period 2022 - 2023. The investigative design of this study is cross-sectional, observational, retrospective, and analytical. In a population of 106 patients, a prevalence of turbinate hypertrophy refractory to treatment of 84% was determined. Gender is not related to the degree of response to treatment. Grade 2 hypertrophy was the most common among patients refractory to treatment, constituting 47.2%. We established an inversely proportional relationship between the degree of turbinate hypertrophy and the effectiveness of treatment, whereby greater hypertrophy leads to lesser effectiveness. We analyzed the treatment evolution over 2 years for each grade of turbinate hypertrophy and established that the higher the degree of hypertrophy, the longer it takes to observe favorable results.