Although ESS improves the sinonasal quality of life in CF patients, it is unclear if ESS offers an additional benefit in terms of antibiotics for pulmonary disease, hospitalization, and pulmonary function. Researchers did this study to determine whether ESS impacts antibiotic use or hospitalizations for pulmonary indications or pulmonary function in CF patients after lung transplantation.
This is a single-institution retrospective study of all patients who underwent lung transplantation for CF. Paired bivariate analyses were performed to determine whether there was a difference in the frequency and length of hospitalizations for pulmonary indications, the number of antibiotic courses for pulmonary exacerbations, and FEV1 slope in the six months before versus after ESS.
A total of twenty patients underwent 36 ESS during the study period. There was significantly higher antibiotic utilization in the six months before ESS compared to the six months after ESS. The frequency and length of hospitalizations, FEV1 slope, and FEV1 trend before and after ESS were not significantly different.
The study concluded that ESS is associated with reducing the frequency of antibiotic utilization for respiratory tract infections in lung transplant recipients with CF. A prospective study is needed to investigate these relationships further.
Reference: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/1945892419830624
