Introduction
Coblation turbinoplasty is an efficient and minimally invasive treatment
for hypertrophic inferior turbinates that cause nasal congestion,
obstruction as well as improving nasal blockage, especially in patients
who suffer from rhinitis (1).
The procedure is mostly performed under general anaesthesia (GA), but
local anaesthesia (LA) is rapidly gaining popularity as it enables the
procedure to be performed in the outpatient setting
(2-4). This would seem advantageous during
the COVID-19 pandemic where the rising number of cancelled elective
procedures has led to longer waiting lists
(5).
To combat the growing number of patients awaiting their surgery,
coblation turbinoplasty under LA became popular at our hospital, from
March 2021. We hypothesised it would reduce the time required in the
operating room, by instead performing this in the outpatient “office”
setting.
Although coblation turbinoplasty under LA has been studied
before(3), we did not identify a
comparative study to evaluate its safety and efficacy against procedures
performed under GA; this formed our main objective. Secondary objectives
included determining the impact of quality of life, comparing costs,
postoperative pain, length of stay and waiting times of the two
anaesthetic procedures.