How to tell if you have sinusitis
Written by:Sinusitis is inflammation of the sinuses (spaces behind the forehead, nasal bones, cheeks and eyes) that occurs with an infection caused by a virus, a bacteria or a fungus.
This disease is very common in winter, but can also be caused by an allergy or by changes in air pressure, such as when traveling by plane.
Symptoms of sinusitis
A common symptom of this infection is headache (headache), but often not diagnosed correctly and confused with other types of headache such as migraine or tension headache. So, to correctly distinguish sinusitis from other diseases, you should consider the following:
- Pain in the face, especially on the forehead, cheeks or inside of the eye
- Very cold nasal congestion
- white or greenish mucus thick and smelly
- Loss of smell
- Fever (not always)
Treating sinusitis
In the first two or three days, sinusitis is treated with anti-inflammatory drugs to relieve symptoms and nasal washes and topical decongestant spray to remove mucus.
If after three days the situation does not improve or even worsens, you need to visit a specialist in otolaryngology to correctly diagnose the disease and propose a treatment, which will usually be antibiotic (surgery is less common, since it is performed only in complicated cases).
