… Continued …
- The symptoms can last longer, more than 10 days. The nasal discharge can be yellow, green, or clear. Daytime cough is also common.
- More severe symptoms. Symptoms such as facial pain, nasal discharge, and high fever last at least 3 to 4 days.
- You may have double-sickening. The symptoms may appear to get better, but then you will have another set of worsening signs and symptoms (return of cough, fever, increased nasal discharge, or severe headache) after 5-6 days.
Again, it’s very rare for sinus infection to become serious. But this doesn’t mean that it cannot pose to the risk of serious complications.
For example, sometimes the problem can be caused by particular health conditions which some could be serious. Sinusitis linked to other health conditions (such as immune disorder, abnormality structure in the nasal cavity, and allergic rhinitis) can be chronic or recurrent. For such cases, the treatment is dependent on the underlying cause of the condition.
The following conditions can also increase the risk of developing chronic sinusitis:
- GERD (gastroesophageal reflux disease).
- Diabetes, a chronic disorder of glucose metabolism.
- Under-active thyroid disorder (hypothyroidism).
- Intravenous steroid treatment.
- Kartagener’s syndrome. It is a genetic disorder that can prevent hair-like structures (cilia) from moving mucus normally through the respiratory tract.
- Cystic fibrosis, an inherited disorder in which mucus becomes very thick and easy to build up.
In rare cases, the infection may spread elsewhere in the skull such as brain (read more in here).
So although sinus infection is usually mild and often gets better in time, it’s still important to understand the warning signs and symptoms of when it turns into serious.
Rare-complications of sinus infection can cause some additional symptoms, which may be serious or even life-threatening. These are outlined below:
