A Retrospective CT Analysis for Prelacrimal Window Access to Maxillary Sinus.

Background and objectives: The prelacrimal window approach (PLWA) is useful for treating anterior maxillary sinus lesions. A previous study reported that the feasibility of PLWA in Chinese patients was 93.0%, which is higher than that in the European population (68.5%). This study aimed to compare the ease of PLWA between a patient group and healthy controls and to analyze the results for Koreans compared to those of previous studies. Differences between the patient and control groups and the distribution of types in the Korean population were evaluated.

Methods: We analyzed 89 paranasal computed tomography (CT) scans from 51 controls and 38 patients (178 sides). We measured the distance distribution between the anterior wall of the maxillary sinus and the anterior wall of the lacrimal duct (D1) and its thickness (T). We compared the values in the control and patient groups.

Results: D1 and D2 were similar between the patient and control groups (p=0.395, p=0.344), though T was greater in the patient group (p<0.001). In the patient group, sinus with inverted papilloma (IP) and normal sinus were not significantly different for any of these measures. The D1 distribution in Koreans did not differ significantly from that of Chinese but did differ from that of Europeans.

Conclusion: The ease of PLWA was 92.2% in Koreans, which is more similar to that of Chinese (93.0%) than to that of Europeans (68.5%). D1 and D2 of the patient group did not differ from those of the control group, but T was greater in the patient group. In the patient group, D1 and D2 were not significantly different between sinus with IP and normal sinus. The frequency of type 2+3 in patients was similar to that of the control group.