STUDY OF NASAL AIRWAY RESISTANCE

This study was designed with the aime of assessement of nasal airwayresistance before and after SMR and septoplasty for patients with septaldeeviations using the mercury electronic (scottand) rhinomonometry.The anterior part of the septum including the nasal valve area is the mostnarrow segement of the nose. Here an impact on nasal patency even by minoranterior septal deviation will greatly increases the nasal airway resistance andseems. to be more important than posterior deviation. Posterior deviation only ifit is huge will increase the nasal airway resistance (Grymer et al., 1989).Using the anterior rhinornanometry, we measured the nasal airwayresistance of each nostril and the total airway resistance before, then at two andsix weeks after SMR and/or septoplasty operation.We found that, the improvement in nasal airway resistance afterseptoplasty either in patients with anterior septal deviation ”group I, A” or inpatients with anterior and posterior deviations ”group 11, A” was highly statisticallysignificant ”P < 0.01”.On the other hand, the improvement in basal airway resistance after SMRin patients with anterior septal deviation ”group I, B” was statistically significant”P<0.05”But it was not significant in those patients with both anterior and