15. Chronic bacterial or viral sinusitis
Chronic sinus infections can also persist for several weeks in some people. In such cases, we call this entity chronic sinusitis. The signs and symptoms are similar, but most of them have important variations that differentiate chronic and acute diseases.
Symptoms of chronic sinusitis are maintained for 12 weeks or more. The patients can experience an episodic worsening of the disease with symptoms similar to acute sinusitis. But when the condition apparently resolves, patients continue experiencing mild symptoms every once in a while before another recrudescence happens.
Chronic sinusitis can happen in three forms, two of which can be associated with bacterial infections. They are chronic sinusitis with nasal polyps and chronic sinusitis without nasal polyps. For doctors, it is crucial to determine if the patient has nasal polyps or not because this fact will guide the treatment.
The signs and symptoms have variations with the acute disease and include the following: