Nasal airflow and odorant transport modeling in patients with chronic rhinosimusitis

Poster presentation at Association for Chemoreception Sciences (ACHEMS) in Sarasota Florida April 25-29, 2007. Introduction: Our on-going clinical project aims to quantify the conductive mechanism contributing toolfactory loss in chronic rhinosinusitis (CRS) patients, in addition to other inflammatory causes(see Yee, et al, 200 and Feng, et al, 203). CRS, a common disease affecting 32 millionAmericans annually, is reportedly associated with at least 15% of all olfactory losses. Airwayconstriction as a result of inflammation or the presence of polyps may limit odor access to thereceptor sites and lead to olfactory dysfunction. As yet, the functional impact of various nasalobstructions as sequelae to CRS and their treatment outcomes have not been successfullyindexed by any existing clinical tools, such as acoustic rhinometry, or rhinomanometry.Computational fluid dynamics (CFD) techniques have shown great promises to simulate nasalairflow and predict odorant delivery rates to the olfactory epithelium based on CT scans. In thisreport, we provide additional support for the hypothesis that the CFD calculation is a betterpredictor of olfactory sensitivity among CRS patients than are conventional methods