A safe, alternative technique for inferior turbinate reduction

Objective: Submucous resection of the inferior turbinates is a conventional technique for reducing their size to achieve patent nasal airways in situa tions where an enlarged turbinate contributes to airway obstruction. Many t echniques and complications have been described in the past. We describe a new inferior turbinate reduction technique performed with powered instrumen tation and assess its success and complication rates. Study Design: A prosp ective study of 120 consecutive patients who underwent submucous resection of the inferior turbinates with a microdebrider, Methods: Patient questionn aires were used for subjective assessment of symptoms before and after the procedure. We graded each patient's inferior turbinates for size from I to III before and 6 weeks after surgery for objective analysis. Results: The c ommon complications of standard submucous resection of inferior turbinates include excessive resection, postoperative bleeding, and crusting. The adva ntage of the microdebrider technique is the precise control of the amount o f tissue and location of tissue that is removed on a submucosal plane. The complications encountered with this technique are Limited to postoperative bleeding that occurred in 1.6% of patients. There was no crusting or excess ive removal of tissue. Conclusion: The results show that submucous resectio n of inferior turbinates with a microdebrider is a safe method of achieving turbinate size reduction with minimal morbidity.