Gulf Coast Breathe Free offers a treatment with shorter recovery time and less pain than traditional sinus surgery

Over the last decade, a new procedure called balloon sinuplasty has come to the rescue for sinus sufferers, says Dr. Matthew Blair of Gulf Coast Breathe Free Sinus & Allergy Centers.

“We take a small catheter that is inserted into the natural opening of the of the sinus, dilate it and then we deflate the balloon,” Blair explained. “This takes less than a minute for each sinus. It permanently opens the sinuses so we can get treatment into the sinus. The sinus is then prevented from being blocked from whatever the cause may be, whether it is anatomic or an inflammatory cause from a condition the patient might have that they cannot control, like nasal polyps, for instance.”

The pain and recovery time is much shorter than with traditional sinus surgery, according to Blair.

“With balloon sinuplasty, you’ll experience blood on the front of the nose for an hour or two,” he said. “You're going to be stuffy for a couple days to probably a week, and you may have a headache for 12 hours or so. So usually, by the next day, people are feeling good enough to go to work.”

Patients having traditional sinus surgery may have a different experience. “I tell people that you are going to have a headache for about three days,” Blair said. “You’ll have a drippy, bloody nose, possibly going to be for 48 to 72 hours, and you're going to be generally stuffy for a week and a half to two weeks.”

According to the American Journal of Rhinology and Allergy, patients feel very little pain during balloon sinuplasty. Average recovery time is only 1.4 days, compared to 4.2 days for traditional sinus surgeries, another study in the medical journal Laryngoscope found.

The American Journal of Rhinology says that 91% of patients who've had a balloon procedure would do it all over again, compared to only 49% of patients who had functional endoscopic sinus surgery.

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Gulf Coast Breathe Free Sinus & Allergy Centers is committed to  providing the best sinus and allergy relief in Pensacola and the surrounding areas, using the most advanced, proven patient-friendly techniques available. With 29 million Americans suffering from sinusitis and 242,000 annual chronic sinusitis ER visits, our mission is to provide minimally invasive options for needed long-lasting relief so that patients can get back to living. We call this mission Breathe Free and Live Well, and it is the North Star that guides us in each unique collaborative patient interaction. To learn more about Gulf Coast Breathe Free Sinus & Allergy Centers, please visit our website.