Abstrakt
Coblation turbinoplasty is an efficient and minimally invasive treatment for hypertrophic inferior turbinates (IT) that cause nasal congestion and obstruction. It improves nasal blockage, especially in patients who suffer from rhinitis.1 The procedure is mostly performed under general anaesthesia (GA), but local anaesthesia (LA) is rapidly gaining popularity as it enables the procedure to be performed in the outpatient setting.2-4 This would seem advantageous during the COVID-19 pandemic, where the rising number of cancelled elective procedures has led to longer waiting lists.5 To combat the growing number of patients awaiting their surgery, coblation turbinoplasty under LA became popular at our hospital from March 2021.
We hypothesised it would reduce the time required in the operating room by performing this in the outpatient 'office' setting instead. Although coblation turbinoplasty under LA has been studied before,3 we did not identify a comparative study to evaluate its safety and efficacy against procedures performed under GA; this formed our main objective.
Secondary objectives included determining the impact on symptom burden, comparing costs, postoperative pain, length of stay and waiting times of the two anaesthetic procedures.