Why our patients love the SNOT20

Although not part of the normal coffee shop discussion, most of us ear nose and throat physicians find humor in the name Snot 20. This refers to a questionnaire that our patients, suffering from sinus and nasal problems, complete before and after treatment. They like it so much, that we put an interactive version of this questionnaire on our website (www.nscaustin.com) so that those suffering from sinus and nasal problems can put a number to their suffering! The acronym stands for the sinonasal outcome test, which makes sense, but this naming was clearly manipulated for humor. The purpose of this test is to try to numerically evaluate the severity of the sinus and nasal problems. Fortunately, the test seems to correlate very well, and is a wonderful way for us to measure how bad you feel and how much better you feel after we fix the problem. Our patients have always been extremely appreciative after we fix problems that have often been present for many years. However, we were unable to put a number to this improvement. With the SNOT 20, we can not only better understand our individual patients, we can now look at a broad cross-section of our patients to better understand trends. As we have more patients taking the questionnaires, we will also be able to accumulate data which will help future patients decide which course of therapy they would like to pursue. This is a very exciting time in our field with our new ability to fix sinus and nasal problems surgically in the office with minimal downtime. Our patients see the value of the therapy, and now we can begin to show them numerically, how much improvement they, and other patients like them, are enjoying. Christopher Thompson, MD