[Endonasal phototherapy in the treatment of allergic rhinitis]. / Alerjik rinit tedavisinde endonazal fototerapi.

OBJECTIVES: In this study, we assessed the effect of endonasal phototherapy on quality of life, nasal obstruction and the other symptoms in allergic rhinitis with visual analog scale (VAS), sinonasal outcome test-20 (SNOT-20), and acoustic rhinometry. PATIENTS AND METHODS: Twenty-four patients (6 males, 18 females; mean age 41.3±13.0 years; range 20 to 60 years) suffering allergic rhinitis refractory to anti allergic drugs for at least two years were enrolled in the study. Each patient underwent a total of six sessions of endonasal phototherapy with Rhinolight (Rhinolight Ltd, Szeged, Hungary) performed three times a week for two weeks. During course of the investigation, additional therapy was not applied to any of the patients. Before and one month after treatment, patients completed visual analog scale and SNOT-20 forms and nasal obstruction was evaluated with acoustic rhinometry. RESULTS: After the treatment, the mean VAS score and the mean total SNOT-20 score were found lower than the results before the therapy (p=0.0001, p=0.0001). A significant decrease was found in the scores of sneezing, nasal discharge, postnasal drainage, coughing after treatment (p=0.0001). During objective evaluation of nasal obstruction with acoustic rhinometry, no statistically significant difference was found between pre- and post-treatment findings. CONCLUSION: Endonasal phototherapy is an effective modality in the treatment of symptomatology in allergic rhinitis patients refractory to antiallergic drugs. It is detected that endonasal phototherapy has positive effects on the quality of life. However, no effect on nasal obstruction was found with acoustic rhinometry which is an objective method.

Vestibular rehabilitation with electrotactile vestibular substitution: early effects.

We aimed to determine the early efficacy of vestibular rehabilitation with electrotactile vestibular substitution system (EVSS) as a new treatment modality in patients with bilateral vestibular loss due to aminoglycoside-induced ototoxicity. Six men and four women with bilateral vestibular failure were rehabilitated with EVSS prospectively. Patients were trained with EVSS for ten sessions each lasted 20 min, two sessions per day. Sensory organization test (SOT) protocol and dizziness handicap inventory (DHI) were used to compare pre- and post-training results of the rehabilitative treatment. Post-training tests were done at the first day of post-treatment period. All ten patients in the standardized testing subset demonstrated improved scores in the composite SOT scores and in the functional transfer testing with DHI after 5 days of training with the EVSS. In conclusion, these preliminary results demonstrate efficacy of the EVSS in improving patients symptoms and signs and signify the evidence of sensory substitution in the early post-training period.