Principles of drug therapy for acute bacterial rhinosinusitis: from evidence-based medicine to practice

The problem of treatment of acute rhinosinusitis (ARS) is extremely important due to high prevalence of the disease. According to statistical data the ARS affects from 6% to 15% of population and does not show any tendency to reduction. These figures are associated with a high rate of acute respiratory viral infection (ARVI) which directly leads to rhinosinusitis. But, however, despite the fact that practically every individual experiences from 2 to 5 episodes of ARVI every year, only 0.5-2% of them are complicated with acute bacterial rhinosinusitis (ABRS). Despite this low percentage of bacterial infection, in 80% of cases systemic antibacterial treatment is prescribed which further worsens the problem of bacterial resistance in the world. The main difficulty in determination of therapeutic approach to ABRS is associated with absence of reliable methods of differential diagnostics of viral and bacterial etiology of the disease. Because of low sensitivity and specificity, none of additional visualization methods of ABRS diagnosing such as radiography, ultrasonography, computed tomography, can be used as a routine laboratory method. Thus, the main method of differential diagnostics of viral and bacterial ARS remains analysis of clinical data which leads to a high rate of diagnostic errors and to polypragmacy.

Nowadays there exists a wide range of medications for treatment of ABRS in the pharmacological market. The choice of therapeutic approach by our international colleagues is mostly based on the requirements of evidence-based medicine. Russian scientists, besides evidence-based medicine principles take into account the pathogenesis of the disease.

In this article different groups of medications for treatment of ABRS are presented. Some of them do not meet the requirements of evidence-based medicine so far, but they are included to the Russian standards and are used for management of ABRS.