Validity of Acoustic Rhinometry in the Evaluation of Patients With Adenoid Hypertrophy

Reliability of acoustic rhinometry (AR) for preoperative diagnosis and decision of surgery in children with adenoid hypertro- phy were investigated in this study. Fifty-five children who cannot tolerate nasal endoscopic examina- tionwereincluded.TheARwasperformedpreoperativelyandpostop- eratively 1 month later. The volume of distance between the 6th and 10th centimeters in rhinogram curve was calculated for evaluating the adenoid notch (AN) region. The volume of AN region was com- pared with each patient's volume of the adenoid tissue removed with adenoidectomy. Whereas the medianadenoidspecimenvolumewas 2.0(1.0-2.0) cm 3 in 23 patients with complaint of nasal obstruction, median AN vol- umesintherhinogramcurvewas2.3(0.8-5.2) cm 3 . All children whose preoperative nasopharyngeal volume was 4.2 cm 3 or less had increased volume in the area representing the nasopharynx on rhinogram. We found a statistically significant relationship between the AN and the adenoid specimen volume (P =0 .000,r = 0.797). The sensitivity and specificity were found as 61.2% and 95.8%, respectively. We concluded that the children whose preoperative nasopharyn- geal volumes were measured as 4.2 cm 3 or less by AR could bene-