Endoscopic surgery outcomes in patients with rhino-orbito-sinusal mucormycosis

The aim of this study is to evaluate the response to endoscopic treatment and treatment outcomes in patients with rhino-orbito-sinusal mucormycosis.

In this descriptive cross-sectional study 19 patients with rhino-orbito-sinusal mucormycosis were involved. Data such as age, gender, 6-month survival rate of the patients, type of underlying disease, site of involvement, number of endoscopic procedures, history of exenterating of the eye, type of received systemic treatments and the time interval between the onset of symptoms and the start of treatment were recorded and analyzed.

The 6-month outcome analysis showed that 10 out of 19 patients (58.8%) survived. The results also revealed no significant difference in 6-month survival rate according to parameters such as gender, underlying disease (57.9% of the patients had diabetes and 42.1% had cancer), age, delay in surgery, site of involvement, and number of surgeries (p> 0.05). However, there was a significant difference in 6-month survival rates of patients with respect to exenterating of the eye (P <0.05).

According to our results, uncontrolled diabetes is the most common underlying cause of rhino-orbito-sinusal mucormycosis. It also seems that exenterating of the eye affects the survival rate of patients. This study suggests that timely and early diagnosis as well as correct treatment, endoscopic procedure if possible, play an important role in the prognosis of the disease and can greatly reduce the mortality rate.