Multispecialty Consortium Introduces Rhinosinusitis Clinical Trial Guidelines.

The Research Initiative, therefore, hopes to stop the paradigm of reacting to symptoms, he said. We hope that documents such as this can redirect energy into the development of evidence-based treatment options.

Therefore, otolaryngologists should view the guidelines as an effort to coordinate and guide research efforts to maximize information that we’re going to start collecting on this series of disease processes, he said. In chronic rhinosinusitis, when we talk about this being an inflammatory disease, we want to know which interventions will affect this disease process and which ones don’t.

The understanding that rhinosinusitis is an inflammatory disease, not necessarily an infectious one, opens up an entirely different way of looking at and studying the disease process, he said. In this way, one might think of chronic rhinosinusitis as comparable to asthma, whereas the acute rhinosinusitis might be more analogous to pneumonia. If you use that comparison, it is easy to see that antibiotics that are appropriate for acute disease may not always be the ideal treatment for chronic rhinosinusitis. This is an inflammatory disease, and we need to identify new forms of therapy. The new guidelines should help researchers help identify chronic rhinosinusitis therapies that are based on evidence from studies that are consistent in definitions, designs, and outcomes.

References

1. Meltzer EO, Hamilos DO, Hadley JA, et al. Rhinosinusitis: Developing guidance for clinical trials. Otolaryngol Head Neck Surg 2006;135 (5Suppl):S31-S80, and J Allergy Clin Immunol 2006;118 (5 Suppl 1):S17-S61.

   [Context Link]

2. Meltzer EO et al. Rhinosinusitis: Establishing definitions for clinical research and patient care. J Allergy Clin Immunol 2004;114:s155-s212.

   [Context Link]

©2007 The Triological Society