Grand Canyon Times

• Some common symptoms of sinusitis include nasal inflammation, reduced sense of taste or smell, nasal discharge, difficulty breathing through your nose, and pain, tenderness, or swelling around the cheeks, eyes, nose or forehead.
• Symptoms that some sufferers might find surprising could include ear pain, bad breath, fatigue, or aching in your upper jaw and teeth.
• There are nonsurgical treatments available to help with sinusitis symptoms, including balloon sinuplasty.

A sinusitis sufferer could benefit from a balloon sinuplasty in quite a few different situations, Dr. Brian Lee of Scottsdale Sinus and Allergy Center said.

Balloon sinuplasty might be warranted "if (a patient is) having issues with congestion, sinus pressure, chronic post-nasal drip, or recurrent sinus infections," Lee said. "It's for people with chronic sinus infections that won't clear despite antibiotics, steroids and all the other conservative measures that they've been through. The safety profile is extremely safe. There's minimal risk of complications. It's done under local anesthesia and the downtime is minimal. So it doesn't have to be a super severe case to warrant a procedural intervention."

Common symptoms of sinusitis include nasal inflammation, reduced sense of taste or smell, nasal discharge, difficulty breathing through your nose and pain, tenderness or swelling around the cheeks, eyes, nose or forehead, he said. Other, less common, possibly surprising symptoms include ear pain, bad breath, fatigue, and aching of the upper jaw and teeth. 

According to the Mayo Clinic, acute sinusitis can not only make it difficult to breathe through your nose, but the area around your eyes and face could become swollen, and you could be dealing with throbbing facial pain and headaches.

An ENT specialist might recommend a saline solution or over-the-counter medication, and if those don't help symptoms improve, they might prescribe antibiotics or a corticosteroid spray. If those treatments do not resolve the sinusitis symptoms, the ENT specialist might recommend sinus surgery. 

Some sinusitis sufferers might also be unaware of available nonsurgical treatments, including balloon sinuplasty, an in-office procedure that's simple and only takes about an hour, according to Entellus Medical. The preparation takes about 30 minutes and involves anesthetics being applied to the nose for more comfort. A thin instrument with a balloon is then guided through your sinus, the balloon is gently inflated for five seconds with saline, and when your sinuses open, the balloon is removed.

To find out if you have symptoms of sinusitis, take this Sinus Self-Assessment Quiz.