Oral Versus Topical Antibiotics for Chronic Rhinosinusitis Exacerbations

The Rhinosinusitis Disability Index is a 30-item questionnaire completed by the patient or subject. Each item has a value of zero to four, a higher score indicates a self-perception of worse symptoms. The minimum score is zero and the maximum score is 120.

The difference score here is the post-treatment score minus the pre-treatment score, with lower meaning more improvement

The Sino-nasal outcome test is a 22-item questionnaire completed by the patient or subject. Each item has a value of zero to five, a higher score indicates a self-perception of worse symptoms. The minimum score is zero and the maximum score is 110.

The difference score here is the post-treatment score minus the pre-treatment score, with lower meaning more improvement

The Perioperative Sinus Endoscopy (POSE) instrument is a specific tool to endoscopically assess the sinus cavities of patients who have undergone endoscopic sinus surgery.

Each POSE score has a minimum of 0 and a maximum of 16, with a higher score indicating a worse outcome.

Here, the Left and Right POSE scores are summed and the difference between baseline and the 14 day after treatment is reported.

The change in bilateral POSE score can in principle be -32 to +32, with increased scores indicating worse outcome and negative scores indicating improvement over the treatment period.

Post-treatment culture negativity, defined as less than 1+ growth of organisms. A subject is counted '1' if both nares are free of bacterial growth, and '0' if growth is 1+ of more

The bacterial community was determined using a 16S rRNA quantitative PCR processed using Quantitative Insights into Microbial Ecology (QIIME) software, version 1.8 to yield the number of operational taxonomic units in each subject sample. The count has a minimum of zero with an increasing score indicating a larger number of distinct bacterial species.