• Adhesions in middle meatus or not
  

• Pain due to cleaning of the nose
  
• Does cleaning of the nose reduce: crusts in the nose 14 days after surgery
  
• the tendency to post operative infections
  
• or increase bleeding from the nose the first 14 days after surgery
  
• nasal congestion after surgery
  

Many surgeons consider the postoperative treatment after sinus surgery as important for the outcome as the surgery itself. However, postoperative treatment regimes differ considerably between surgeons. They include non-intervention, frequent in-office endoscopic debridement, stenting of the middle meatus, saline douching or irrigation of the nose, or combinations of these measures in various ways. The lack of consensus is unfortunate. It indicates a lack of knowledge about how to treat these patients optimally after surgery. This is partly due to a lack of internationally acknowledged randomised, comparative, prospective studies on the effects of the various postoperative measures and their interactions. Accordingly, some patients may receive a too intensive postoperative follow up, with unnecessary frequent visits with the doctor, unnecessary bleeding and inconvenience from unnecessary debridement/cleaning of the nose, and increased costs due to unnecessary medication. Conversely, there may be patients that receive too little attention in the postoperative period, and thus may have a suboptimal result of the operation.

Frequent cleaning/debridement of the nose after sinus surgery is believed to improve the outcome of functional endoscopic sinus surgery (FESS). However, the scientific data on its effects are limited. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the effects of cleaning/ debridement of the middle meatus 5-7 days and 12-14 days after sinus surgery in a randomized, partly blinded, controlled clinical trial.