Eosinophilia of the nasal secreta in nasal polyposis

Twenty-seven subjects, male and female, on an average of 44 years old, presenting nasal polyposis, have been studied. The authors wanted to determine a method for the computation of the eosinophils in nasal secretions and then, they wanted to verify the eosinophilia's meaning in connection with nasal polyposis etiology, course and therapy. Polyps have been considered <<eosinophils>> when the percentage of granulocyte eosinophils over the whole body of nasal secretions granulocytes was above 10%; on the contrary <<neutrophils>> when this percentage was below 10%. Following this criteria, the percentage of eosinophil polyps was 63%, the percentage of neutrophil polyps 37%. The method proved efficacious in computing eosinophils in the nasal secretions and then useful to discriminate allergic or immunologic cases of polyposis from the other one with different etiologies. This is very important especially for therapy: in fact <<eosinophils>> polyps respond better than <<neutrophil>> one to corticosteroids medical therapy; furthermore about recurrences after operations is very important to know the kind of polyps because this one are most probably frequent in <<eosinophils>> than <<neutrophil>> polyps.