Even some of the world's top performers get sidelined by sinus infections. | 140i wiki/Wikimedia Commons
Even some of the world's top performers get sidelined by sinus infections. | 140i wiki/Wikimedia Commons
No one is immune from sinus problems that make it difficult to work, even rock stars.
In 2016, singer Ariana Grande had to cancel her concert in Rock in Rio in Portugal due to a sinus infection, Yahoo News reported.
"I'm deeply saddened to tell my babes in Portugal that I have to cancel my performance at Rock in Rio. (I've literally been crying over this for an hour)," Grande told her fans on Instagram. "I have a throat & sinus infection and my doctors have advised me not to sing for a few days."
It happened again in 2019 in Lexington, Ky., the Huffington Post reported.
"Hi my loves. So I’m still very sick. I’ve been sick since the last London show,” she wrote on Instagram. “I don’t know how it’s possible but my throat and head are still in so much pain. I sound okay. I’m just in a lot of pain and it’s difficult to breathe during the show. I am seeing my doctor and trying my best to get better for tomorrow’s show. The last thing i would ever want to do is cancel a show at this point with so few left.”
Nearly 37 million Americans suffer from at least one episode of acute nasal inflammation each year, according to the website American Sinus.
Antibiotics are often the first course of treatment, said Dr. Glenn E. Waldman of Bella Vista ENT in Thousand Oaks.
"If you can place a patient on two weeks of antibiotics, and everything clears up ... obviously, that's the least invasive thing you can do," he said. "But in our practice, we definitely don't believe in having a patient on eight weeks of oral antibiotics or 12 weeks of oral antibiotics, or two or three weeks of antibiotics every month, or every other month."
Patients can develop a resistance to antibiotics and the drugs can also cause gastrointestinal problems, the physician said.
"So we use a lot of saline rinses with antibiotics and steroids, sometimes antifungals mixed in with the rinse," Waldman said. "So now you're doing a topical treatment as opposed to a systemic treatment that doesn't get absorbed by way of the GI system. So it's not getting in your bloodstream and won't start going through your stomach."
When those treatments no longer work, the center moves onto procedures such as balloon sinuplasty, Waldman said. A tiny catheter with a balloon is gently inserted into the sinus cavity. The balloon is slowly inflated to open the block sinus and then deflated.
Bella Vista offers a free online quiz to evaluate your sinus symptoms.
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