Research Article The Complications of Sinusitis in a Tertiary Care Hospital: Types, Patient Characteristics, and Outcomes Saisawat Chaiyasate, 1 Supranee Fooanant, 1 Niramon Navacharoen, 1 Kannika Roongrotwattanasiri, 1 Pongsakorn Tantilipikorn, 2 and Jayanton Patumanond 3,4 1 Department of Otolaryngology, Faculty of Medicine, Chiang Mai University, Chiang Mai 50000, hailand 2 Department of Otorhinolaryngology, Faculty of Medicine, Siriraj Hospital, Mahidol University, Bangkok 10700, hailand 3 Division of Clinical Epidemiology, Department of Community Medicine, Faculty of Medicine, Chiang Mai University, Chiang Mai 50000, hailand 4 Clinical Research Center, Faculty of Medicine, hammasat University, Pathum hani 12120, hailand Correspondence should be addressed to Saisawat Chaiyasate; saisawat.c@cmu.ac.th Received 4 October 2014; Revised 8 January 2015; Accepted 11 January 2015 Academic Editor: Leonard P. Rybak Copyright © 2015 Saisawat Chaiyasate et al. his is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Objective. To study the complications of sinusitis in a referral hospital and the outcome of the treatment according to the type of complication. Methods. A retrospective study was performed on patients with sinusitis who were admitted to a referral hospital from 2003 to 2012. he data for the sinusitis patients who had complications were reviewed. Results and Discussion. Eighty-ive patients were included in the study, of whom 50 were male (58.8%). Fourteen of the cases were less than 15 years old, and 27 of the patients (31.7%) had more than one type of complication. he most common complication was of the orbital type (100% in the children, 38% in the adults). Ater the treatment, all of the children and 45 of the adults (63.4%) recovered, eight of the adult patients died (11.3%), and 18 of the adults were cured with morbidity (25.3%). he patients with more numerous complications had poorer outcomes. When the types of complications were compared (adjusted for age, gender, and comorbidities), the intracranial complication was the only one that was statistically signiicant for mortality. Conclusion. he outcomes of the treatment depended on the number and type of complications, with the poorest results achieved in cases of intracranial complications. 1. Introduction Sinusitis, which is a common ear, nose, and throat disease, develops ater a viral upper respiratory tract infection in 0.5– 2% of patients [1]. However, its complications are unusual. he complication rates of the patients admitted with acute sinusitis varied from 3.7 to 20% [2]. Generally, the complications of sinusitis are classiied into three types: local (osseous), orbital, and intracranial compli- cations [2, 3]. he most common complication is the orbital type (60–75%), followed by the intracranial (15–20%) and the local type (5–10%). Many studies have reported cranial nerve(s) palsy in the posterior ethmoid or sphenoiditis, which did not occur with the orbital or intracranial type [4–7]. However, optic neuropathy alone has been included in the complications of chronic sinusitis [2]. In a 1997–2002 study of hai patients by the senior author, 8.2% of the admitted sinusitis patients had complications, but the frontal sinus was not a common cause of the intracranial complications, and cranial neuropathies did not occur with either meningitis or brain abscesses in these patients [8]. he objective of the current study was to determine the complications of sinusitis in a referral hospital and the outcome of the treatments according to the type of the complication. 2. Materials and Methods A retrospective study was performed on sinusitis patients admitted to Chiang Mai University Hospital from 2003 to 2012. he data for the sinusitis patients with complications and their operative schedules were reviewed, gathered, and grouped as follows. Hindawi Publishing Corporation International Journal of Otolaryngology Volume 2015, Article ID 709302, 5 pages http://dx.doi.org/10.1155/2015/709302