Role of adenoidectomy in chronic nasal obstruction after nasal steroid therapy failure.

OBJECTIVE: To identify clinical characteristics of pediatric patients that failed nasal steroid therapy for management of chronic nasal obstruction and to evaluate the efficacy of adenoidectomy in this subset of patients. DESIGN: Retrospective chart review. SETTING: Tertiary care academic center. SUBJECTS: Analysis was performed on children that underwent adenoidectomy between 2011 and 2015 for chronic nasal obstruction refractory to nasal steroids. RESULTS: Seventy-four cases were identified. Average age of presentation was 3.6years. Pre-operatively, 25.7% of patients had known asthma, 16.2% reported respiratory allergies, and 20.3% reported use of systemic antihistamines. The most common pre-operative symptoms included mouth breathing (82.4%), nasal congestion (81.1%), snoring (71.6%), and rhinorrhea (37.8%). Average adenoid size was 68% pre-operatively. Ninety-eight percent of patients experienced improvement or resolution of their symptoms following adenoidectomy. CONCLUSIONS: This study demonstrates average rates of respiratory allergies, but high rates of asthma among patients that fail nasal steroid therapy for chronic nasal obstruction. Adenoidectomy is a highly efficacious intervention in this subset of patients.