LA Harbor News

• Some common symptoms of sinusitis include nasal inflammation, reduced sense of taste or smell, nasal discharge, difficulty breathing through your nose, and pain, tenderness or swelling around the cheeks, eyes, nose or forehead.
• Symptoms that some sufferers might find surprising could include ear pain, bad breath, fatigue, or aching in your upper jaw and teeth.
• There are non-surgical treatments available to help with sinusitis symptoms, including balloon sinuplasty.

Dr. Matt Hershcovitch of SoCal Breathe Free said there’s a plethora of unexpected symptoms that come with chronic sinusitis including mental and cognitive difficulties.

“Unfortunately for people with chronic sinusitis, they have their symptoms all the time,” Hershcovitch told LA Harbor News. “It leads to significant mental and cognitive difficulties and anguish. I've had more senior patients come to me for their headaches and facial pain and also thinking that they have onset of dementia. However, when I converse with them and examine them, they have no sign of dementia and it's actually just their perceived cognitive deficit because they can't concentrate on things for very long because of their headaches. So there is a very, very real link between these problems.”

According to the Mayo Clinic, acute sinusitis can not only make it difficult to breathe through your nose, but it could make the area around your eyes and face swollen, which could lead to throbbing facial pain and headaches.

While chronic sinusitis can include the usual symptoms that everyone expects like nasal inflammation, a stuffy or runny nose, and postnasal drainage, other symptoms can include pain or swelling in the face, a sore throat, bad breath, loss of smell and taste and fatigue.

NHS Inform advises people to see a physician if they are experiencing symptoms that aren't improving for more than a week. An ENT specialist might initially recommend a saline solution or over-the-counter medication and then might prescribe antibiotics or corticosteroid spray if there isn’t an improvement in symptoms. If those treatments do not resolve the sinusitis symptoms, the ENT specialist might suggest sinus surgery.

Some sinusitis sufferers might be unaware of nonsurgical treatments that are available, including balloon sinuplasty. A balloon sinuplasty is an in-office procedure that's simple and only takes about an hour, according to Entellus Medical. The preparation takes about 30 minutes and involves anesthetics being applied to the nose for more comfort. A thin instrument with a balloon is then guided through the sinus and gently inflated for five seconds with saline. The balloon is removed when the sinuses open.

If you’re interested in learning more about treating sinusitis, please take this Sinus Self-Assessment Quiz.