H. Hallen et Je. Juto, AN OBJECTIVE METHOD TO RECORD CHANGES IN NASAL REACTIVITY DURING TREATMENT OF NONALLERGIC NASAL HYPERREACTIVITY, ORL, 56(2), 1994, pp. 92-95
Non-allergic nasal hyperreactivity is a common problem and many patien
ts suffer from daily symptoms demanding medication. Hitherto there exi
sts no objective method to study congestional changes in clinical prac
tice, to evaluate the efficacy of different therapies. This study is a
n attempt to develop a method for this purpose. Eleven patients with n
on-allergic nasal hyperreactivity entered the trial. A histamine chall
enge model with three different histamine concentrations was used. Rec
ordings of the reactivity of the nasal mucosa were made with rhinoster
eometry before and after 14 days of topical treatment with budesonide
200 mu g/day. The results were compared to symptom scores before and a
fter treatment. It was found that there was a significant improvement
after treatment both with regard to symptom score and to the recorded
reactivity of the nasal mucosa. There was a correlation between sympto
m score and recorded reactivity before treatment, but not after treatm
ent. The results indicate that the symptom score technique is sufficie
nt in situations where only a semiquantitative method is required. How
ever, when studying changes in the degree of hyperreactivity, the dema
nds for an objective measuring method is greater. The study indicates
that the presented method may be adapted for this purpose.