A Rare Case of Hypoplasia of the Paranasal Sinuses and Atrophy of All Three Turbinates

Abstract

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVE: Agenesis and hypoplasia of the paranasal sinuses is an anatomical variation that often occurs in frontal sinuses but this rarely happens combined with other paranasal sinuses. The present study was conducted to report a rare case of hypoplasia of the paranasal sinuses and atrophy of all three turbinates in Iran. CASE REPORT: In this study, we report the case of a 28-year-old man who referred with trauma to the head and anosmia. The patient had no complaints of nasal obstruction or congestion, cerebrospinal fluid leakage before or after trauma. He also had no previous history of rhinosinusitis or olfactory disorder. CT scans of nose and paranasal sinuses showed some findings such as bilateral middle and inferior concha atrophy, bilateral hypoplasia of maxillary, ethmoid, sphenoid, and right frontal sinuses and left frontal sinus aplasia. To the best of our knowledge, the number of reports about the combination of abnormal variations of paranasal sinuses was less than 5 and in the present case report, all sinuses had hypoplasia and at the same time, there was turbinate atrophy, while the patient had no clinical symptoms. CONCLUSION: According to the present study, pneumatization of sinus is not necessarily associated with clinical symptoms and other factors play a role in sinus function.

Keywords

• surgery
• diagnostic imaging
• aplasia
• paranasal sinuses.