Efficacy of endoscopic sinus surgery for eosinophilic chronic rhinosinusitis with asthma

Dear Editor, Eosinophilic chronic rhinosinusitis (ECRS) is one of intractable disease and a significant health problem. Although medical treatment and endoscopic sinus surgery (ESS) for chronic rhinosinusitis (CRS) can markedly improve symptoms, patients with ECRS respond poorly to many treatment modalities. As shown in several studies of coexistent CRS and asthma, ESS has been successfully used to treat medically refractory ECRS. But its effect on asthma is still controversial, to clarify this point, we performed a prospective study to evaluate the effect of ESS for ECRS patients with asthma. Thirty-six ECRS patients with asthma were referred to the Department of Otolaryngology, Japanese Red Cross Society, Wakayama Medical Center and Tohoku Medical and Pharmaceutical University between February 2010 and March 2017. The diagnosis of ECRS was based on the Japanese Epidemiological Survey of Refractory Eosinophilic Chronic Rhinosinusitis (JESREC) scoring system and was definitively diagnosed as ECRS by examination of pathology. Informed consent was obtained under protocols approved by the Institutional Review Board. Clinical features of the patients with ECRS are summarized in Table 1.