Not the same thing. There is still a big difference between rhinitis and sinusitis.
Rhinitis and sinusitis belong to two different diseases. Although the onset is in the nasal cavity, the degree of inflammation between them is completely different. There are three different differences between rhinitis and sinusitis:
1. The lesion range is different.
Judging from the appearance. Our nose has two ventilation holes, called nostrils, and this ventilated part is called nasal cavity in medicine. In addition to the nasal cavity, there are actually four cavities on each side, collectively called sinuses. If the nose is compared to a building, the nasal cavity is the corridor leading to each floor, and the sinus is also the room of each floor.
If inflammation enters the building, if it only occurs in the corridor and does not enter the room, then this is what we usually call rhinitis, but if inflammation spreads to the whole building and enters the room, then this is sinusitis. Therefore, the scope of rhinitis is only nasal cavity, but sinusitis is an upgraded version of rhinitis. The whole inflammation appears in the nasal cavity and paranasal sinuses at the same time, and its incidence range becomes wider.
2. The severity is different
The symptoms of rhinitis are generally mild, usually manifested as itchy nose, runny nose, stuffy nose and sneezing. The nose is mainly runny nose. The symptoms of sinusitis are much more serious than rhinitis. The main symptoms of sinusitis are dizziness, headache, olfactory degeneration, exhaustion, memory loss and thick yellow nose.
3. Different treatment schemes
The treatment schemes of the two are also different. For rhinitis, the current treatment is mainly drug conservative treatment. Under special circumstances, such as chronic hypertrophic rhinitis, surgery is needed to recover. Compared with rhinitis, sinusitis is basically similar to rhinitis in the selectivity of drug treatment, but the course of treatment is much longer than rhinitis. If the condition does not improve after drug treatment, it must be treated surgically.
In short, rhinitis and sinusitis are actually two diseases with different degrees of inflammation. As long as rhinitis can be protected and treated in time in the early stage, it will be of great help to the chances of recovery and the control of the disease. However, if it is not treated in time, the difficulty of later treatment will increase a lot.