The impact of chronic rhinosinusitis on long-term survival in lung transplantation recipients

Abstract

Conclusions: Chronic rhinosinusitis diagnosed according to the European Position Paper on Rhinosinusitis and Nasal Polyps 2012, not by computed tomography alone, is one of the prognostic factors affecting long-term survival in patients with lung transplantation. Endoscopic sinus surgery might play a beneficial role in the management of lung transplantation recipients with chronic rhinosinusitis.

Objective: To show the effect of paranasal sinus infection on post-lung transplantation survival.

Method: Lung transplantation recipients were included in this study. Computed tomography was performed before and after lung transplantation. The severity of chronic rhinosinusitis was evaluated by Lund–Mackay scoring system. The survival rate was calculated by the Kaplan–Meier method.

Results: One hundred and forty-eight patients received lung transplantation for various indications. Chronic rhinosinusitis was found in 18.9% (28/148) of the lung transplantation recipients. Of 28 patients with chronic rhinosinusitis, seven patients underwent endoscopic sinus surgery due to persistent post-nasal drip. The recipients with chronic rhinosinusitis who did not receive endoscopic sinus surgery (n = 21) showed a significantly lower survival rate as compared to the patients without chronic rhinosinusitis. There was no statistically significant difference in the survival rate between the recipients with (n = 50) and without (n = 98) paranasal sinus abnormality on computed tomography.

Keywords:

• Lung transplant
• infection
• survival rate
• pneumonia
• bronchiolitis obliterans

Disclosure statement

The authors report no conflicts of interest. The authors alone are responsible for the content and writing of this article.

Funding

This work was supported by JSPS KAKENHI (Grants-in-Aid for Scientific Research from The Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology of Japan; Grant Number 25462642 and 16K20249).