Ear, nose and throat manifestations in patients with primary antibody deficiencies

Abstract: Recurrent ear, nose, and throat (ENT) infections are common presenting symptoms in patients with primary antibody deficiencies, but sometimes they remain undiagnosed for many years and are subjected to different antibiotics because of a lack of experience in immunodeficiencies. In order to determin the frequency of ENT symptoms among the patients with antibody deficiencies, 83 antibody deficient patients were studied from 1980 during a 20-year period, and their ENT symptoms were registered.This historical cohort study comprised of 83 patients including 25 X link agammaglubulinemi, (XLA) 40 common variable immunodeficiency (CVID), 14 IgA deficiency (IgA-D); 50 male, 33 female. The average length of time between onset and diagnosis was 40 months in our patients. Seventy-two of our patients (86.7%), had recurrent ENT symptoms (sinusitis, otitis and/or mastoidits) during the course of their disease. Each XLA patient had experienced 3.6 episodes of otitis per year, but after diagnosis it decreased to 0.7 episode per year. This decrease was about 5.8 folds in CVID (3.8 to 0.65) and 1.4 folds in IgA (2.2 to 1.6) these results show that a significant number of antibody deficient patients can be present with ENT symptoms (48% in this study). Diagnostic dealy was not much different from other reports. Early diagnosisand treatment of immunodeficiencies significantly prevents recurrent infections hence preventing long time complications