Historically, sinusitis has been divided into three categories (acute, subacute, and chronic sinusitis) based on disease duration. Patients with chronic sinusitis have symptoms for more than 6 weeks. At the time this terminology was developed, all sinusitis cases were believed to be infectious, and this idea led to the prominent use of antibiotics and surgical drainage as treatment. It now is clear, however, that most patients with chronic sinusitis do not have an infectious disorder [1,2], This finding has led to the need to develop more appropriate terminology to describe the myriad of conditions that make up chronic sinusitis. Four major pathophysiologic processes are responsible for chronic sinusitis. A small subset of patients has chronic infectious sinusitis.
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