Objective: To assess whether change in endoscopy score correlates with change in health-related quality of life (HRQOL) following endoscopic sinus surgery for chronic rhinosinusitis.
Design: Prospective open cohort.
Setting: Tertiary rhinology clinic.
Patients: One hundred two adult patients with and without nasal polyposis who elected to undergo endoscopic sinus surgery and were followed up for 12 +/- 2 months postoperatively.
Intervention: Patient characteristics and Lund-Mackay computed tomography scores were recorded preoperatively. Lund-Kennedy endoscopy scores and 2 HRQOL surveys, the Rhinosinusitis Disability Index and Chronic Sinusitis Survey, were examined before and after surgery.
Main outcome measures: Postoperative changes in endoscopy score and HRQOL were examined using bivariate and multivariate analyses.
Results: Statistically significant improvements were found in endoscopy score (P < .001) and for all total and subscale HRQOL measures (P < .001). After controlling for baseline status and comorbid factors, improvement in endoscopy score significantly correlated with 12-month improvement on the total Rhinosinusitis Disability Index (P = .01), the physical (P = .01) and functional (P = .02) subscales of the Rhinosinusitis Disability Index, and the symptom subscale of the Chronic Sinusitis Survey (P = .003) but could explain only 25.5% to 36.6% of the linear variation for these HRQOL improvements.
Conclusions: For most patients, endoscopy scores and disease-specific HRQOL significantly improve after endoscopic sinus surgery. Changes in endoscopy scores explain a portion of the improvement in HRQOL. For patients with chronic rhinosinusitis, improvements in disease-specific HRQOL outcomes are complex, multidimensional constructs that cannot be entirely explained by surgical changes measured by endoscopic examination. Trial Registration clinicaltrials.gov Identifier: NCT00799097.