Correlation between Fibreoptic Nasopharyngoscopy and Symptom Score in the Evaluation of Obstructive Adenoid Enlargement

Background: Obstructive adenoid enlargement is common in our environmentit, it manifests with nasal obstruction, persistent mouth breathing, snoring, sleep apnea, and daytime somnolence, which results in poor school performance. Fibreoptic nasopharyngoscopy has recently been recommended for the diagnosis of adenoid enlargement. It is, however, expensive and not readily available in a resource-constrained setting. Clinical symptomatology is invaluable to the physician, as it may be the only assessment tool available to a healthcare provider in a rural setting. However, some workers considered it unreliable and insufficient for the diagnosis of adenoid enlargement. Objectives: The research’s aim was to find out how reliable clinical symptoms are for diagnosing obstructive adenoid enlargement compared to fiberoptic nasopharyngoscopy. Materials and methods: This was a cross-sectional study among children with obstructive ade-noid enlargement. Ethical approval and informed consent were given. A structured questionnaire was utelized to assess clinical symptomatology. A fiberoptic nasopharyngoscopic examination was carried out, and the data were analyzed. Results: This study recruited 79 (56.4%) men and 61 (43.6%) women within the age range of 2–10 years with a mean of 4.5 ± 2.5 years. The clinical symptomatology score correctly predicted 60% of endoscopic grade 1, 67.5% of endoscopic grade 2, and 78.9% of endoscopic grade 3 adenoid enlargement. There was a statistically significant association between clinical symptomatology score and fiberoptic endoscopic findings ( χ 2 = 96.9, P-value = 0.000). Conclusion: This study found that the clinical symptomatology score is reliable in diagnosing obstructive adenoid enlargement.