Correlation between severity of diabetes mellitus, polyneuropathy and nasal mucociliary clearance

Objective:  To examine the relationship between the severity of polyneuropathy and nasal mucociliary clearance times in patients with polyneuropathy and investigate how the presence and severity of electrophysiological polyneuropathy might affect mucociliary clearance in patients with diabetes mellitus. Material and Methods: This prospective cross-sectional study was carried out in the Neurol-ogy and Ear, Nose and Throat (ENT) clinics in a tertiary hospital.  The study included three groups of patients with 20 participants in each group (Group 1, patients with diabetic poly-neuropathy; Group 2, patients with non-diabetic polyneuropathy; and Group 3, diabetes melli-tus patients with a normal nerve conduction study) Nasal saccharin test was performed on all patients. Results: There was a statistically significant difference in the duration of nasal mucociliary clearance among the groups (p= 0.001). There was a positive, statistically significant (p = 0.007) correlation between the nasal mucociliary clearance duration and the severity of poly-neuropathy. The nasal mucociliary clearance duration increased with the severity of polyneuropathy. Conclusion: Patients with diabetes mellitus are a special group, and preventable problems should be taken into consideration when examining nasal pathologies. It should be kept in mind that nasal mucociliary clearance dysfunction can be both a cause and a result in management of diabetes mellitus patients, and thus it should be evaluated carefully.