Morphology and Variations of the Nose and Paranasal Sinuses: A Systematic Review

The anatomy of the nasal cavity and the paranasal sinuses are important to the clinicians not only for diagnosis but for treatment of diseases. Functional endoscopic sinus surgery (FESS) is a minimally invasive procedure used to treat chronic sinusitis, nasal polyps, and other sinus conditions and aims to restore normal sinus function. A sound knowledge in anatomy of the nose and paranasal sinuses is imperative to achieve better patient care. This review was conducted using PubMed database using the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analysis (PRISMA) guidelines 2020. Described literature includes morphology and variations of nasal septum, uncinate process, turbinates, maxillary sinus, ethmoid sinuses, frontal sinus, frontal recess, fronto-ethmoid cells and sphenoid sinuses. Studies done in different geographical regions have shown different prevalences of these variations This article underscores the morphology as well as variations with prevalences described the literature available in the PubMed and few selected articles on google scholar.