Gateway Reporter

• 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.

Dr. Manish Khanna of Capitol Breathe Free said sinusitis patients might be suffering from symptoms that don't necessarily seem like they're triggered by sinusitis, and treatment can help in more ways than you might think. 

"Our nasal passages are really the center of our head," Khanna said. "Problems in our nasal passages affect our ears, can affect our eyes and cause eye pressure, it affects our throat. All this is connected. But also further down when you get into the lungs, chronic sinus issues and recurring sinus issues can trigger asthma exacerbations and reactive airway disease. So there are so many organ systems that are touched by our nasal passages. Proper health there can make a big difference in a lot of ways."

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 have throbbing facial pain and headaches, according to the Mayo Clinic.

Sinusitis sufferers might experience congestion, facial pain, headaches, toothaches, nasal drainage, a reduced ability to smell, fever, and bad breath, according to NHS Inform. People experiencing symptoms that aren't improving for more than a week should see a physician. 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, Entellus Medical says. 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.

Readers can check their sinus symptoms with this Sinus Self-Assessment Quiz.