We read with interest Stallman et al’s report on the incidence of concha bullosa and its relationship to nasal septal deviation (1). They mentioned the fact that, to their knowledge, no study had evaluated concha bullosa in relation to nasal septal deviation. It would seem to have been appropriate for these authors to cite a previous report, by Elahi et al, about paraseptal structural changes and chronic sinus disease in relation to the deviated septum (2), because Elahi et al indicate the relationship between nasal septal deviation and concha bullosa. Elahi et al concluded that increasing angles of septal deviation are associated with bilateral sinus disease and contralateral middle turbinate abnormalities (including concha bullosa) and ethmoidal bulla prominence (Table 1). Their study methods differed from Stallman et al’s by grouping the nasal septal deviation according to deviation angles and definition of concha bullosa.
Although Stallman et al’s literature search missed Elahi et al’s report, we congratulate them on their well-written and nicely illustrated study.
Middle-turbinate abnormalities (percentage) (from Reference 2)
References
Reply
We thank Dr. Arslan for his letter regarding our recent article on “concha bullosa.” We apologize for not citing the article by Elahi et al, as it does pertain to the problem of concha bullosa. There were, however, many articles regarding this topic and we had to cite only those that we thought were most closely related to our article and how we performed our study. Of necessity, this meant that not all previous works could be cited. We do thank Dr. Arslan for his kind comments regarding our work.
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