Do you have constant sinus trouble with all the facial pain, pressure, drainage and nothing seems to relieve it?

You may be a candidate for image guided sinus surgery.

Image guided surgery is nothing new, but it is being used in new areas of medicine.

And, sinus surgery is one of them.

Image guidance uses some of the same stealth principles used by the military.

Dr. Hans Caspary is checking to see if a patient could be a candidate for image guided surgery. “You think of GPS for a car,” he says. “Well, this is GPS for surgery.”

This technology is used during surgery for severe forms of chronic sinusitis.

They are cases when previous sinus surgery has left scaring that's changed the anatomy of the nose or where a patient's sinus anatomy is very unusual, making typical surgery difficult.

However, not everyone who has serious sinus troubles will be a candidate.

“Not everybody needs it,” Caspary says. “That's the important thing to remember. It helps with somebody who has terrible time with previous infections, surgery or trauma.”

While complications for sinus surgery are very low, unusual nasal structures may put a patient at increased risk for complication.

The guided surgery system may help to minimize those risks.

“It makes things less dangerous. Surgery has its risks,” Caspary adds. “This can actually reduce the risk and help the surgeon focus where they are and pinpoint the area where they need to be. We're actually seeing inside the nose, inside the head where we are three dimensionally on the X-ray and CAT scan machine while we are doing surgery.”

The precision of the image guidance system means less tissue is damaged and that means a faster recovery.

“We go through the nose through a fiber optic scope,” Caspary explains. “So there's no scaring; anything that we need to do on the outside. Once we're looking inside, we can direct where the infection is or the blockage or polyps or anything like that and we can take out all that needs to come out.”

It’s outpatient surgery and takes between one and two hours..

Most patients go home right after the surgery and they don't even have gauze packing their nose.