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Doctors seeing more sinus infections around holiday season

7 years 2 months 2 weeks ago Tuesday, December 27 2016 Dec 27, 2016 December 27, 2016 5:25 PM December 27, 2016 in News
Source: WBRZ

BATON ROUGE – With holiday season in full swing, doctors have seen more people coming down with sinus infections.

From coughing, to sneezing, to running noses, doctors have seen the symptoms far too often in their offices recently.

"We've seen an increase in patients coming in with nasal congestion, lots of cough, sore throats, ear pressure, and some sinus infections," Liz Eure, a nurse practitioner, said.

Eure explained, pressure on sinuses causes infections.

"Basically what will happen is your sinus cavities will become inflamed and your nasal drainage can't drain appropriately, so it will back up, and it goes into the ears, or it will sit in your sinus pockets and causes sinus infections," Eure said.

Those coming down with infections have been getting prescriptions filled to help ease the symptoms. Pharmacists say they have been busy filling the orders.

"The last few weeks, especially really since Christmas." TJ Woodard, owner and pharmacist at Prescriptions to Geaux said of the up tick in patients.

"I'm not sure if it's the weather change or what, but there's been a lot of the sinus drip, post nasal drip, general body aches, a lot of the sinus infections, so we really have seen a lot in the last couple of weeks."

Woodard said over-the-counter medications should help control the issues, but if they progress, stronger medications are needed.

"If the over the counter medications are controlling it and it progresses and gets worse, then we're seeing a lot of the steroid shots and things like that," Woodard said.

Over-the-counter medications usually run between $10 and $20 and steroid shots run around $50 to $100.

Doctors say a sinus infection takes about two weeks to go away.

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