Your sinuses are hollow spaces behind your cheeks and forehead. These spaces connect to your nose.
What is sinus cancer?
Sinus cancer is cancer that grows in your sinuses. It usually happens in the sinuses right beside your nose or behind the bridge of your nose (the maxillary and ethmoid sinuses).
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Sinus cancer happens most often in people from Japan and South Africa—it’s rare in other groups
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Doctors don’t know what causes sinus cancer but think it may be related to breathing in certain types of wood and metal dust—it isn’t caused by sinus infections
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You may not have symptoms until the cancer has grown and pushes on other structures
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To treat sinus cancer, doctors do surgery and radiation therapy
What are the symptoms of sinus cancer?
How can doctors tell if I have sinus cancer?
Doctors will look inside your sinuses by putting a flexible viewing tube through your nose and into your sinuses. They may do a biopsy. With a biopsy, they remove a sample of tissue to look at under a microscope.
Doctors will do tests to see how big your cancer is and whether it has spread to other parts of your body: They'll do this using:
How do doctors treat sinus cancer?
Doctors will usually do:
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Surgery to remove the tumor
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Sometimes radiation therapy if there's a good chance the cancer might come back
Sometimes surgery changes the shape or look of your face. Doctors will use the latest methods to keep the way you look as unchanged as possible.
If doctors don't think surgery can be done safely, they'll give you radiation therapy plus chemotherapy.
Radiation to your sinuses may cause:
