Sinus Surgery Services

Chronic sinus issues like congestion, pressure or infections can affect your quality of life. If medications don’t bring you lasting relief, sinus surgery may be the next step.

Sinus surgery can resolve the problems that cause sinus symptoms in many cases. But even if it can’t completely stop symptoms, surgery may improve them. It can also help you get more effective results when you use nasal sprays and other medications.

The Rush Approach to Sinus Surgery

Whether your sinus issues are chronic or recurring — meaning they come and go — they can take a toll on your daily life.

No matter what the cause or how long you've been having symptoms, you can trust our nationally respected sinus experts to help you breathe easier and feel better. Their goal is to guide you to lasting relief.

If you're having problems with your nose or paranasal sinuses — the area surrounding your nasal cavity — we offer complete medical and surgical treatments for problems ranging from recurrent acute and chronic sinusitis for children and adults to nasal polyps.

We also welcome patients seeking second opinions, whether to explore an initial diagnosis or seek options when other treatments or surgery haven’t provided relief from symptoms. We’ll perform a full evaluation within a few days to find out whether sinus surgery is right for you.

Who Can Benefit From Sinus Surgery?

Treating underlying causes can often relieve sinus inflammation and pain without surgery.

For example, your doctor may prescribe antibiotics if you have a bacterial infection. Or they may treat allergy-related congestion with antihistamines and other medicines, as well as allergy shots.

But your specialist may consider surgery if other options aren’t fully managing your concerns. If you still have chronic sinus issues that often come and go, last for months or get worse because of structural problems in your nose, surgery may help.

Some of the issues that sinus surgery can commonly treat the following:

• Rhinosinusitis, including pediatric sinusitis: Often caused by allergies or colds, this happens when the lining of the sinuses — the hollow spaces around the nose — becomes swollen and painful. When it lasts longer than 12 weeks, it’s considered chronic. Endoscopic surgery may be a treatment option if medication doesn’t work.
• Fungal rhinosinusitis: This is caused by a fungal infection of the paranasal sinuses. There are several types, including fungal ball, allergic fungal sinusitis and invasive fungal sinusitis.
• Refractory rhinosinusitis: Also called drug-resistant rhinosinusitis, this is when antibiotics fail to improve rhinosinusitis symptoms.
• Nasal polyps: These tiny polyps, or growths, are noncancerous. But they do block the sinuses, which can cause or worsen sinusitis.
• Deviated septum: This happens when the structure of bone and cartillage that divides the nose is off-center and restricts breathing in one nostril.
• Enlarged nasal turbinates, or turbinate hypertrophy: When turbinates, which are structures inside the nose, become inflamed, they can obstruct breathing. This can happen because of allergies or other reasons.
• Aspirin exacerbated respiratory disease (AERD): Also known as Samter’s triad, this is a chronic condition that consists of asthma, recurrent sinus disease with nasal polyps, and a sensitivity to aspirin and other nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs). Often, people with AERD have chronic sinus infections and don't respond to standard polyp treatments. AERD can also cause you to lose your sense of smell.
• Eye and brain conditions: Advanced endoscopic sinus surgery techniques are also used to reach and fix problems in the eyes and brain, including the following:
  • Excessive eye tearing and blocked tear duct
  • Bulging eyes due to Graves' disease
  • Cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) leaks, which occur when the tissue around the brain is torn and spinal fluid leaks out
  • Encephaloceles, a defect that causes the brain to protrude through openings in the skull base into the nose and sinuses
  • Growths or injuries affecting the optic nerve at the back of the eye

Types of Sinus Surgery

There are many surgery procedures that can address different sinus issues. These procedures generally fit into three main types.

Types of sinus surgery include the following:

• Nasal surgery: This may be an option to treat conditions that affect the nasal passage, like deviated septum and enlarged nasal turbinates. These issues can create breathing difficulties, cause snoring and sleep issues and make it difficult to exercise. Septoplasty and inferior turbinate reduction procedures are two routine procedures that can treat these conditions. They are routine outpatient procedures that usually take about an hour. Patients often go home the same day and recover in about a week.

  Sometimes patients have more complex issues related to nasal valve collapse or the structures within the nose. For these patients, our nasal surgery specialists work closely with facial plastic and reconstructive surgeons to make sure breathing obstructions, often working together to perform procedures at the same time.

• Functional endoscopic sinus surgery (FESS): These procedures are minimally invasive and done under general anesthesia. They can address several issues. Because they are performed close to the eyes and brain, they are very precise and done with endoscopes.

  FESS may treat conditions that haven’t responded to other treatments such as antibiotics, steroids, irrigation and allergy management. Some of these conditions include rhinosinusitis, fungal sinusitis and nasal polyps. One of the goals is to remove any diseased tissue and pus from the sinuses. Another is to open tiny drainage passageways that ventilate the sinuses and allow them to drain properly. Not only does this improve airflow for breathing, but it also helps improve the effectiveness of topical therapies like saline, steroid and antibiotic irrigations. During surgery, the surgeon can also collect cultures for testing to better understand any issues you may have. They can test for bacteria or fungal infections, inflammation or changes related to fibrosis or scarring of the tissues among other things. This helps with long-term follow-up care after surgery.

  FESS can also address orbital issues, or problems around the eye sockets. These might include obstructed tear ducts, which can be treated with lacrimal system surgery. Or it can treat orbitopathy from Graves' disease that can threaten vision or muscle movement in the eyes through procedures like orbital or optic nerve decompression.

  And FESS can address cerebrospinal fluid leaks. These leaks can happen spontaneously with elevated brain pressure or trauma, or it can be related to skull base surgery. The only treatment option used to be full craniotomy, which involves removing part of the skull for treatment. These can now be treated endoscopically through the nose.