Concha bullosa is a relatively common anatomic variant that is in fact an enlarged pneumatized middle turbinate. We report a case of giant concha bullosa in a 21-year-old woman who had a history of nasal obstruction. Anterior nasal examination of the nasal cavity revealed bilateral nasal masses which were covered with normal mucosa. Nasal endoscopy of both nasal cavities was impossible because ...

acoustic analysis of sounds produced during speech provides significant information about the physiology of larynx and vocal tract. the analysis of voice power spectrum is a fundamental sensitive method of acoustic assessment that provides valuable information about the voice source and characteristics of vocal tract resonance cavities. the changes in long-term average spectrum (ltas) spectral ...

This article focuses on the tools that are available to assess nasal airflow, their utility in clinical practice, and comparison between them. Assessment of the nasal airway traditionally relied on history and physical examination only. Recently, tools have been developed that aid the physician in completing an assessment by measurement of parameters that are directly or indirectly related to a...

IMPORTANCE Nasal airway obstruction is a common presenting symptom in otolaryngology and facial plastic surgery practices, and the potential for multiple contributing causes requires extensive evaluation. OBJECTIVE To develop a classification system for nasal obstruction using a subjective, validated quality-of-life instrument. DESIGN, SETTING, AND PARTICIPANTS Retrospective study of patien...

Subjective nasal obstruction is a common chronic complaint caused by mucosal disease, skeletal abnormality or a combination of both. The challenge is to determine the main cause and to decide whether the intervention should be medical or surgical. Diagnosis is done by a combination of rhinoscopy, subjective and objective assessments of nasal obstruction. Rhinomanometry measures the nasal airway...

BACKGROUND Pierre Robin sequence (PRS) refers to the association of micrognathia, glossoptosis, and airway obstruction. Cases with severe dyspnea due to upper airway obstruction immediately after birth are very rare. We here report two cases with PRS who developed severe dyspnea due to morphological abnormality immediately after birth and were rescued by fiberoptic nasotracheal intubation. CA...

The effect of transtracheal oxygen administration by means of a 9-French (2.7 mm) percutaneous catheter was assessed in five patients with severe obstructive sleep apnea. We hypothesized that the delivery of oxygen below the site of airway obstruction should reduce the arterial oxygen desaturation during apneas and hypopneas, thereby increasing respiratory stability. Standard sleep and respirat...

The discovery that the gas nitric oxide (NO) is an important signaling molecule in the cardiovascular system earned its Nobel prize in 1998. NO has since been found to play important roles in a variety of physiologic and pathophysiologic processes in the body including vasoregulation, hemostasis, neurotransmission, immune defense, and respiration. The surprisingly high concentrations of NO in t...

We present a case of obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) that required multilevel surgical correction of the airway and literature review and discuss the role supraglottic laryngeal collapse can have in OSA. A 34-year-old man presented to a tertiary otolaryngology clinic for treatment of OSA. He previously had nasal and palate surgeries and a Repose tongue suspension. His residual apnea hypopnea inde...

We studied two populations of patients who snored and had frequent nocturnal asthma attacks: ten overweight men presenting with typical obstructive sleep apnoea syndrome, and a group of five adolescents with regular snoring and an increase in negative inspiratory oesophageal pressure during stage II non-rapid eye movement (NREM) and rapid eye movement (REM) sleep. All subjects presented cranio-...