I often meet patients with chronic rhinosinusitis in the clinic and the main question is can my disease be cured? Can it be cured? Can it be treated with medicine or surgery? Which one is more effective, Chinese medicine or Western medicine?
Chronic rhinosinusitis is a chronic inflammation of the mucous membrane of the nasal cavity and sinuses, including infectious and non-infectious. The principle of treatment is anti-infection and anti-inflammatory treatment, if there are structural deformities affecting the function (sinus drainage, nasal ventilation), no improvement by conservative treatment with internal medicine, surgery is required, and post-operative medication is needed to restore the normal function of the mucosa.
The principle of this treatment is that drugs are the mainstay and surgery is supplementary (for most sinusitis), local is the mainstay and systemic is supplementary.
So do we use Chinese or Western medicine? The general principle is that acute needs western medicine, anti-infection to reduce complications and solve nasal ventilation; slow needs herbal systemic conditioning to improve systemic constitution and reduce susceptibility.
Therefore, whether it is medication or surgery, herbal medicine or western medicine, the key is when to use the medication, when to operate, when to stop the medication and when to not operate. Each doctor’s experience varies, but the general principle should be the same.