Predictive factors for the outcome of nasal septal perforation repair.

OBJECTIVES: The aim of this study was to determine the important predictive factors for successful repair of nasal septal perforation.

MATERIALS AND METHODS: In this study, we examined 35 symptomatic patients (27 males and 8 females, aged from 16 to 76 years) with a nasal septal perforation. In order to correlate pre- and intra-operative factors to the respective results, preoperative symptoms, etiologies, size of the perforation, operation methods and postoperative results from the patients were reviewed and analyzed using logistic regression.

RESULTS: Nasal obstruction, crust and epistaxis were common preoperative symptoms. In most cases, perforations were observed to evolve after the patients' trauma caused from their previous nasal surgery experience. The overall reperforation rate was 48% and turned out to be associated with both large perforation size and unilateral mucosal flap coverage. However, we found no strong evidence that other factors such as graft materials and medical conditions were related with surgical failure. The surgical operations for our examinees resulted in complete healing of epistaxis and whistling, whereas nasal obstruction and crusting persisted after the surgeries. In addition, symptom improvement was negatively correlated with large perforation size and nasal trauma history including previous nasal surgeries.

CONCLUSION: Precise and complete coverage with bilateral flaps might be the most important factor for successful closure in a septal perforation. Moreover, both trauma history and large perforation size might be at risk for persistent symptoms after septal perforation repair.