In life, there are many misconceptions about rhinitis, mainly in the following areas.
The first is that there are many kinds of rhinitis, so it is difficult to distinguish between different rhinitis
The most important thing to know is that the symptoms of nasal congestion and runny nose are “rhinitis”, but you don’t know that there are many kinds of rhinitis, and different rhinitis may have symptoms of nasal congestion and runny nose. Clinically, different rhinitis have different lesions, and the characteristics or nature of nasal congestion and nasal discharge are different, and the treatment methods and prognosis (i.e., prediction of the duration of the disease, difficulty of treatment, chance of complications, and danger) are also different or completely different. When people seek medical attention, they often just tell the doctor “I have rhinitis” without understanding the specific symptoms that should be described when suffering from rhinitis and the characteristics of each of these specific symptoms, thus affecting the doctor’s ability to quickly make a judgment (preliminary diagnosis) of what kind of rhinitis is present.
”Rhinitis” is a general name for a disease, or a synonym for a category of diseases, rather than a specific disease name. “Rhinitis” can be divided into two categories: acute and chronic. Acute rhinitis mainly refers to acute rhinitis, acute sinusitis; chronic rhinitis includes chronic rhinitis, allergic rhinitis, chronic sinusitis, dry rhinitis, atrophic rhinitis and several others. Except for atrophic rhinitis, which is a relatively rare disease, the other several are common.
Acute rhinitis is called cold in Chinese internal medicine and upper respiratory tract infection or common cold in Western internal medicine. It is mainly due to cold, causing sneezing, clear snot and nasal congestion, and the whole body can be slightly uncomfortable, which can be cured in 7-10 days in general.
Acute sinusitis is mainly caused by the aggravation of the cold, resulting in a large amount of yellowish snot, or headache, fever, etc.
There are two kinds of chronic rhinitis, namely chronic simple rhinitis (more common) and chronic hypertrophic rhinitis (less common). Chronic simple rhinitis is mainly caused by repeated colds, or colds are not cured, the course of the disease is prolonged; due to long-term failure to heal, the condition slowly aggravated, the formation of chronic hypertrophic rhinitis. Therefore, chronic rhinitis usually lasts for several months or years and is characterized by frequent nasal congestion and little snot. The difference between the two types is that chronic simple rhinitis is milder, with intermittent (sometimes not) and alternating nasal congestion (left-sided congestion and right-sided passage, or right-sided congestion and left-sided passage), and nasal congestion is obvious in the morning and evening, when sitting still, and when the weather is cold. Chronic hypertrophic rhinitis, its nasal congestion is generally heavy, more persistent (in a fairly long period of time, nasal congestion does not disappear), sometimes light and sometimes heavy changes, examination of the turbinates not only swollen, and the surface is not flat, so called hypertrophy.
Allergic rhinitis is related to allergic constitution, characterized by paroxysmal nasal itching, sneezing, clear snot, easy to attack in the morning and evening or after sudden changes in temperature and bad gas stimulation, and perennial or seasonal recurrent attacks, some people can be accompanied by itchy eyes, ears, skin, the more severe cases can induce asthma.
Chronic sinusitis is mainly due to acute sinusitis is not cured, or acute sinusitis recurrence, the course of the disease is prolonged. The main feature is often nasal congestion, pus, or headache.
The lesion of dry rhinitis is mainly due to dryness of the nasal mucosa and less fluid, causing a dry feeling in the nose, a little dry crust in the anterior nostril, causing discomfort or itching and rubbing the nose, and easy to repeatedly small amount of bleeding easy to stop as the main characteristics.
The main feature of atrophic rhinitis is the dryness of the nose, the turbinates become smaller, so the nasal cavity is wide and hyperventilation, olfactory impairment is obvious, the course of the disease can often be very long.
The actual fact is that you will be able to get a lot more than just a few of these.
The actual fact is that you will be able to get a lot more than just a few of the most popular and most popular items. However, the basic prerequisite for self-healing rhinitis is usually that the necessary treatment has been given and that you are in good health or have a strong immune system, if the symptoms persist for more than three weeks without treatment or after interruption of treatment, then treatment should be given.
1, the danger of rhinitis: rhinitis is harmful to human health, to acute and chronic rhinitis, acute and chronic sinusitis, allergic rhinitis is more obvious, and the impact on children patients is more prominent. The reason for the harmful effects of rhinitis is mainly twofold, one is due to nasal congestion, nasal congestion makes people breathe poorly, which can easily lead to headaches, sleeplessness, irritability and affect the quality of life. The second is due to the inflammation and its secretions; secondly, the inflammation and secretions of rhinitis can cause many diseases, or complications of rhinitis, which affect children patients more seriously. The main harmful effects of rhinitis are as follows.
(1) nasal complications: chronic rhinitis, allergic rhinitis, chronic sinusitis, can cause nasal polyps; sinusitis can also cause sinus cysts.
(2) Eye complications: can cause lacrimal sacitis (out of tears, eye mucus), severe sinusitis may cause purulent infection in the orbit, or cause optic neuritis (vision loss).
(3) Ear complications: It may cause secretory otitis media (swelling and stuffiness in the ear, blurred hearing) or purulent otitis media (pus flowing in the ear, hearing loss).
(4) Pharyngeal complications: due to postnasal secretion flow, it can cause pharyngitis (throat discomfort and pain, spitting), adenoiditis and hypertrophy (snoring in children), tonsillitis, laryngitis (hoarseness), and upper airway cough syndrome (post-snot drip, retractive spitting, easy coughing when falling asleep).
(5) Effects on the lower respiratory tract: can cause bronchitis, bronchiectasis, allergic rhinitis with chronic sinusitis and possibly asthma attacks.
(6) Effects on the digestive system: more obvious in children. Children can not blow their nose, nasal secretions are swallowed into the digestive tract, causing decreased appetite, stomach discomfort, indigestion, and mesenteric lymphadenitis (chronic pain around the belly button).
(7) Effects on the mental nervous system: more obvious in children patients. Harmful substances in nasal secretions absorbed by the body can cause easy fright during sleep, teeth grinding, cold sweat, or cause a decline in intelligence and memory loss.
(8) The impact on children’s physical development: long duration of the disease, the more serious children more obvious, can cause height, weight, facial development disorders.
2, rhinitis “self-healing” common situation analysis: due to the existence of the body’s immune function and self-repair function, in many cases, people from disease to restore health, not necessarily or not entirely drugs or treatment methods play a decisive role, but also can not deny the drugs and treatment in the elimination of disease, to promote the body from disease to health transfer process. The important contribution of medication and treatment in the process of eliminating disease and promoting the transition from disease to health cannot be denied. For rhinitis, in some cases, the eventual healing can indeed be achieved by “self-healing”, but there must be certain conditions, the key to this condition are two, one is good health (strong immune system), and the second is that the disease is no longer serious or relatively mild, otherwise, it should receive or continue to receive treatment. The common cases of self-healing rhinitis are analyzed as follows.
(1) Acute rhinitis: the condition is mild, I am in good health and have a strong immune system, and can be cured without treatment.
(2) Acute sinusitis: After treatment, the main symptoms are basically eliminated, and those who are in better health or have stronger immunity, the subsequent mild nasal congestion symptoms can be cured without treatment.
(3) Allergic rhinitis: The main cause of seasonal allergic rhinitis patients is allergy to seasonal pollen; therefore, the symptoms can disappear on their own when they are not in the onset season, or when they migrate to live in a geographical area without this pollen. One of the main causes of perennial allergic rhinitis may be allergy to mites. When the patient is in a season or area where the temperature and humidity are not suitable for mites to breed, the symptoms may disappear on their own or be significantly reduced.
(4) Chronic rhinitis: In seasons when the temperature difference between morning, midday and evening is not significant and the humidity is moderate, the symptoms may disappear on their own if the individual is still physically fit or has good immunity.
(5) Chronic sinusitis: after appropriate treatment the symptoms are basically eliminated (at this time, if the use of X-ray or CT examination, sinusitis signs will still exist), the physique or immunity is still good, and remain in more than six months without a cold, the subsequent condition can be self-healing. Therefore, during a normal physical examination, if there are minor lesions of sinusitis after X-ray or CT examination, those who usually do not have sinusitis-related symptoms (with the widespread and frequent medical examinations of the population in recent years, such cases are becoming more and more common) do not necessarily need treatment.
(6) Dry rhinitis: under the self-control of keeping the nasal cavity moist, some patients can heal themselves without seeking medical attention.
(7) Drug-dependent rhinitis (also known as drug rhinitis, due to excessive long-term use of nasal decongestants) and atrophic rhinitis: difficult to heal on their own and require treatment.
(8) Some people (e.g. children, those who are not physically strong), regularly catch colds and are prone to all kinds of rhinitis. After a certain period of time (e.g. adults after proper conditioning; weak children after the age of 7 or 10, and those who are more physically weak after the age of 14), the incidence of colds can be greatly reduced, and the key factor is that the physical condition is improved and the immune system is strengthened. This is most pronounced in childhood. Therefore, young parents do not need to be too anxious about the situation of easy to catch a cold in childhood – timely treatment when sick, and pay attention to the prevention of colds, children will be significantly improved when they grow up, and should have full confidence in this, do not move to their own crying nose, tears.
The problem of rhinitis is easily solved by “surgery”.
The main types of rhinitis that can be treated surgically are chronic rhinitis, chronic sinusitis, allergic rhinitis, and atrophic rhinitis. In fact, there are strict indications (selective) for surgery for these types of rhinitis (for more details on the indications for surgery for different rhinitis, refer to my paper on the disease published on this website), and it is not necessary to have surgery if the doctor is willing to operate, or if the individual doctor recommends surgery. In this regard, what we should know is.
1, these kinds of rhinitis treatment options, in general, are preferred to conservative therapy, only if the doctor believes that there are significant indications for surgery, or after a systematic phase of conservative therapy with poor results, then surgery can be carefully considered.
2, any surgery is destructive and has unpredictable risks, before choosing surgery, you should be fully prepared for it. Nasal surgery is likely to have a negative impact on the development of the nasal face of children, and children before the age of 14, the younger they are, the more cautiously they need to choose nasal surgery.
3. Most of the surgical treatments for these nasal diseases have obvious recent effects, but they are also prone to recurrence, some of which are relatively high (e.g. allergic rhinitis), and a few patients have unsatisfactory results after surgery (especially chronic rhinitis), and even complications (the more likely ones are nasal dryness and olfactory disorders, some of which are not necessarily caused by technical problems, but are related to the patient’s special constitution, and are therefore unpredictable). Therefore, it is unpredictable).
4, sinusitis surgery (sinus surgery) after the full recovery period generally takes three months, during the recovery period need to continue treatment (including local and internal drug treatment), otherwise easy to relapse. Because surgery for sinusitis, including adjuvant surgery (such as septum correction, nasal polyp removal) and radical surgery (mainly refers to intra-sinus surgery), although it can solve the local causes of sinusitis, part of the local lesions, but it is difficult to solve the fundamental cause of the weak immune function of the human body, the existence of chronic inflammation is difficult to eliminate.