Reduced ciliary action in chronic sinusitis.

In chronic sinusitis, the disturbance of mucociliary transport explicitly represents the pathology of the mucous membrane. It was established by a photo-electric method that in this disease, mucociliary transport is disturbed as the result of not only change in secretory function but also a decrease in the frequency of ciliary beating. In the in vitro experiment using mucous membrane samples from 10 cases of chronic sinusitis, the frequency of ciliary beating was lowered slightly to about 409 +/- 84 beats per minute at 30 degrees C. In the most active phase of action, human cilia in sinusitis beat about 720 times per minute at 30 degrees C in vitro. The ciliary actions of the mucous membrane in human chronic sinusitis were classified into three types: 1) gathering type, 2) bifocal type, and 3) scattering type.