ORIGINAL CONTRIBUTION Postoperative improvement in acoustic rhinometry measurements after septoplasty correlates with long-term satisfaction* Summary Background: Not much is known about long-term satisfaction of septoplasty. Our goal was to compare pre- and postoperative acoustic rhinometry measurements with satisfaction 11 years after surgery. Methodology: Acoustic rhinometry measurements were performed preoperatively and 3 months postoperatively. Satisfaction was evaluated with semi-structured interviews by telephone 11 years after surgery. Symptoms were evaluated using the NOSE score. Results: In total, 222 patients were interviewed and eligible to enter the study. Of these, 213 had preoperative acoustic rhinome- try and 159 had postoperative acoustic rhinometry. In total, 157 patients had a complete data set. Mean follow-up time was 11.3 years. Patients satisfied with surgery had a bigger improvement in total minimum cross-sectional area before decongestion and total nasal cavity volume after decongestion. NOSE scores were not correlated with acoustic rhinometry measurements. Conclusion: Acoustic rhinometry could be a valuable tool for evaluating the results of septoplasty. Satisfaction at 11 years follow- up was associated with 3 months postoperative acoustic rhinometry improvements. Acoustic rhinometry did not show preopera- tive patient selection potential. Key words: nasal obstruction, nasal septum, treatment outcome, patient satisfaction, acoustic rhinometry Navid M. Toyserkani, Thomas Frisch, Christian von Buchwald Department of Otolaryngology, Head and Neck Surgery, Rigshospitalet and Faculty of Health Sciences, University of Copenhagen, Denmark Rhinology 51: 171-175, 2013 DOI:10.4193/Rhino12.163 *Received for publication: October 2, 2012 Accepted: February 5, 2013 171 Introduction Nasal obstruction is a common problem managed in otorhi- nolaryngology. Difficulty with nasal breathing can have many causes but often a deviated nasal septum is the cause. This can vary in severity and the prevalence of septal deviation has been reported to be up to 80% (1) . As such, the deviated septum is not always the problem but if believed so the definitive treatment for this is surgical correction, and septoplasty is one of the most commonly performed surgical procedures by otolaryngolo- gists (2) . Nasal obstruction symptoms are subjective and do not always coincide with nasal cavity findings. Thus, objective measures have been proposed such as active anterior rhinomanometry, acoustic rhinometry and nasal peak flow. These methods, howe- ver, have produced mixed results regarding the correlation with subjective symptoms and there is no agreement on a measure- ment tool (3-6) . Acoustic rhinometry (AR) measures the geometry of the nose by means of acoustic reflections. Studies comparing acoustic