Overview of Nasal Airway and Nasal Breathing Evaluation

Several methods are available for evaluating nasal breathing and nasal airflow, as this evaluation may be made from several different perspectives. Physiologic methods for nasal airway evaluation directly measure nasal airflow or nasal airway resistance, while anatomical methods measure nasal airway dimensions. Subjective methods evaluate nasal breathing through several validated patient-reported scales assessing nasal breathing. Computational fluid dynamics evaluates nasal airflow through the analysis of several physics' variables of the nasal airway. Being familiar to these methods is of utmost importance for the nasal surgeon to be able to understand data provided by the different methods and to be able to choose the combination of evaluation methods that will provide the information most relevant to each clinical situation.