Dear Anders and Yehudah,
I agree with Anders. It would be interresting to test how accurate method antral 
saccharine test would be. I expect that transport time might be a little bit 
longer from maxillary sinus but however with cooperative patients the method 
could be used for clinical evaluation. Compared to nasal saccharine test the 
antral test should be much more accurate.

best regards
Markus Rautiainen

Anders Cervin:
>Dear Yehudah and Markus
>I have not followed your discussion from the start, but wouldn't be fairly 
>simple and inexpensive to make an antral puncture and insufflate some 
>sacharine crystals into the sinuses and just measure the time for the 
>patient to notice the sweet taste.
>
>best regards
>Anders Cervin
>-----Ursprungligt meddelande-----
>Från:  Rautiainen Markus ÄSMTP:[log in to unmask]Å
>Skickat:       den 5 oktober 1998 06:40
>Till:  Andrey S. Lopatin
>Ämne:  antral mucociliary clearance
>
>Dear Andrey, dear Yehudah,
>
>The assessment of mucociliary clearance of maxillary sinuses would be an
>excellent tool for routine clinical use, but until now we do not have 
>method
>that would be suitable for it. The biggest problem of our method is the
>relatively high cost of  using isotope and gamma camera.  The dose of 
>radiation
>from isotope is also very small (about 10% of sinus x-ray) and should not 
>be any
>problem.
>
>I do not find antral puncture so traumatic that we could not use it as a
>preoperative examination for patients who are suffering from chronic 
>sinusitis.
>In Finland antral puncture is still used a lot as a treatment of acute 
>maxillary
>sinusitis. It is teached for all medical students and about 50 % of general 
>practitioners are using antral puncture in their practise.
>
>We have also tried endoscopically guided administration of tracer into the
>sinuses and I agree that with endoscopes we have nowadays it is really 
>difficult
>and causes too much suffering for patients.
>
>Best regards
>
>Markus
>


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