Re: Gandomi, B, Bayat, A, Kazemei, T. Outcomes of septoplasty in young adults: the nasal obstruction septoplasty effectiveness study (2010) 31:180-192. ¹

1 Authors of the published manuscript, “Outcomes of septoplasty in young adults: the nasal obstruction septoplasty effectiveness study (2010) 31:180-192″, were requested to provide commentary, but none was received.

I was concerned to find that the above study by Gandomi et al only discusses septoplasty in the title and abstract and concludes that septoplasty provides subjective benefit to patients without mentioning in the abstract that 72% of the patients also underwent turbinate manipulation such as turbinectomy. The title and abstract of the article are misleading as the great majority of the patients in the study underwent both turbinate surgery and septoplasty, making it impossible to conclude the isolated benefit of any septoplasty. The authors do mention turbinate surgery in the results and discussion, but the article will be quoted as supporting the benefits of septoplasty alone, when, in fact, this is not the case. The subjective benefits provided by the surgery are not compared with any control as mentioned in the discussion, and this further weakens the case that the surgery provides any objective benefit above that of the placebo effects of surgery. Septoplasty can provide substantial benefits to correctly selected patients as demonstrated in previous work in this area using objective measures to select patients and demonstrate the efficacy of the surgery , but the present study only confuses the literature on the topic, especially for those who only read the title and abstract of published work.