Prevalence of Chronic Rhinosinusitis in a Population of Patients with Gastroesophageal Reflux Disease

Abstract

Background An increased coexistence of gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD) and chronic rhinosinusitis (CRS) has been reported in epidemiologic and register studies, and reflux has been shown more frequently in patients with CRS in studies using esophagus pH manometry compared to participants without CRS. A discussion is ongoing about whether there might be an association between these two diseases and, if so, whether the association is causal. Objective The purpose of this study was to clinically investigate the prevalence and symptom severity scores of CRS among patients with GERD. The results were compared with those of a randomly assigned control group from the general Danish population. Method In this case–control study, 82 patients with GERD were examined for CRS using the European Position Paper on Rhinosinusitis and Nasal Polyps criteria, which combine patient history and anterior/posterior rhinoscopy results. Sinonasal-related quality of life was assessed by using the Sino-Nasal Outcome Test 22 (SNOT-22). These results were compared with those of a population-based control group examined for CRS in the same way. Results The prevalence of CRS among patients with GERD was 20.7% (95% confidence interval [CI], 12.0%-29.5%), significantly higher than the CRS prevalence of 8.5% (95% CI, 6.8%-10.2%) in the background population. Patients with GERD and CRS had an average SNOT-22 score of 43.8, whereas patients with CRS from the background population scored, on average, 28.1. Having GERD increased the mean SNOT-22 score in patients with CRS by 15.7 (95% CI, 6.5-24.9). Conclusion The results of this study provide additional evidence of an association between GERD and CRS and indicate that GERD may play a role in the development of CRS. The results also show that sinonasal-related quality of life is decreased in patients with CRS who also suffer from GERD.