Endoscopic sinus surgery has become an increasingly popular treatment for chronic sinus conditions among Medicare beneficiaries over the past decade, according to a new study published in the Archives of Otolaryngology-Head & Neck Surgery.
The per-capita rate of Medicare recipients undergoing endoscopic sinus surgery rose 20% from 1998 to 2006, while the rate of patients undergoing open procedures to treat chronic sinus conditions decreased 40%, according to the findings. The per-capita rate of rhinosinusitis diagnoses among Medicare beneficiaries declined slightly (1.4%) over the 8-year study period.
The researchers from the Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center in Lebanon, N.H., based their findings on a 20% sample of Medicare patients aged 65 to 99 using data provided by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.
"Our findings indicate that endoscopic sinus surgery is increasingly becoming the mainstay of chronic rhinosinusitis management in the Medicare population," write the authors, led by Giridhar Venkatraman, MD, MBA, of Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center's department of surgery. They recommend further studies to investigate the root causes of this uptick in minimally invasive surgical treatment and comparative studies to examine the merits of surgical treatment vs. medical management of chronic sinus conditions.
Among several limitations of this particular study, the authors note that rhinosinusitis is more common in younger people, therefore the findings based on Medicare data may not reflect overall national trends in sinus treatment.
Irene Tsikitas
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