Chronic maxillary sinusitis in palaeopathology: A review of methods.

OBJECTIVE: This study reviews the palaeopathological literature discussing maxillary sinusitis to examine current trends and issues within the study of this condition, and to make recommendations for future research in this area. MATERIALS: Seventy-five studies were identified through a literature search of digital and physical sources. METHODS: Information regarding study metadata, the populations investigated, sinusitis diagnostic criteria, and sinusitis prevalence was examined. RESULTS: Populations from the UK and Europe were the most studied, reflecting both palaeopathology's systemic colonialism and academic legacies. Most studies used diagnostic criteria published in the mid-1990s, with some subsequent studies modifying these criteria. CONCLUSIONS: The diagnostic criteria from 1995 are widely used but do not include all possible bone changes seen within sinusitis. There is also a need for researchers to engage in issues of data reductionism when using descriptive categories for archaeological sites and populations. SIGNIFICANCE: This paper provides considerations as to how the 1995 diagnostic criteria may be revised by future researchers and synthesises much of the published sinusitis prevalence data to assist researchers interested in the palaeopathology of respiratory disease. LIMITATIONS: More general osteological research, which includes palaeopathological information, was likely missed from this review due to the choice of key terms and languages used in the literature search. SUGGESTIONS FOR FURTHER RESEARCH: Additional research into sinusitis in archaeological populations outside of Western Europe is required. Further work examining the ability to compare pathological data from macroscopic observation and medical imaging would be advantageous to palaeopathology as a whole.

Honeycomb sterna: an unusual case of a developmental abnormality in the sternum.

This report details an unusual case of a human sternal developmental abnormality of an anatomical specimen part of the skeletal collection curated by University College London, Anthropology Department skeletal collection. This rarely reported developmental abnormality is caused by the non-fusion of lateral ossification centres in the sternebrae, resulting in the mesosternum having a honeycomb-like appearance. Sternal defects are typically underreported in the clinical literature as many cases being asymptomatic that they are typically diagnosed incidentally, as such there is a dearth in our current understanding of the development and anatomical variants of the sternum. Although in recent years, large-scale CT studies have investigated the prevalence of sternal developmental abnormalities, these studies have not reported sternal defects similar to the individual presented in this report. While most sternal defects are clinically uneventful, the lack of awareness of these variants can result in misinterpretation of radiological and pathological findings as such an understanding of anatomical variants even when asymptomatic is vital.