Sinusitis Diagnosis

Howard Levine, M.D.
Mt. Sinai Nasal-Sinus Center, Cleveland, OH

Trouble with sinusitis? Wonder why your nose is blocked? Annoyed by
headaches, too? Around the world, physicians continue to increase their
understanding of sinusitis.

In spite of the many new methods of diagnosing and managing true
sinusitis, the most important thing is being certain you actually have
obtained the correct diagnosis!

Sinusitis: Difficult to Determine
Sinusitis may give you some of the same symptoms as a cold or allergy.

In order to get to the true source of the problem, several things might
be needed:

 a.. Physician asks you many questions to learn your history;
 b.. In office nasal exam is performed with a small nasal telescope;
 c.. Computed tomographic (CT) scan of the nose and sinus is taken.
Exact diagnosis. Proper treatment.
Sinusitis can best be defined by determining the duration and types of
symptoms. Because sinus symptoms overlap with allergy and cold symptoms,
the following symptom combinations help lead one to to the correct
diagnosis.

Symptoms are divided into two categories:

 a.. Very important
 b.. Less important
Very Important symptoms include the following:

 a.. Facial pain or pressure
 b.. Facial congestion or fullness
 c.. Nasal obstruction
 d.. Thick & discolored drainage
 e.. Change in taste or smell
Less important symptoms include the following:

 a.. Headache
 b.. Fatigue
 c.. Bad breath
 d.. Fever
 e.. Tooth pain
 f.. Cough
 g.. Ear pressure
For an individual to have any type of sinusitis, one of the following
combinations is needed:

 a.. At least two of the very important symptoms or
 b.. One very important symptom and two less important symptoms
In order to be certain of what is causing your sinus and breathing
discomfort, check with a nasal-sinus specialist.

I experience this too a lot - everything seems like an effort because of the
lethargy sinusitis brings on.

With the neck thing, I've read this here too and experienced it. I think it
was ENT who said that running a warm shower on the back of the neck is good.
Try and consciously drop your shoulders too, as the neck tension can cause
that 'pressure head' feeling - it just creeps up the back of the neck and
keeps going!

Indian head massage really helps me - like nothing else, I think the
constant rubbing creates blood flow and relaxes the head muscles - a good
neck rub will do the same thing :)

--

Tony

Hello,
It seems strange your Doc. hasnot addressed your problem.
You need a new Doc.