Dr. Robert Palmer joins with Great Day Houston to talk about a procedure that removes sinus infections.

Video Transcript:

Speaker 1: Welcome back to Great Day. It is everyday life for so many people living in Houston. Wheezing, sneezing, stuffy nose and headaches. Dr. Robert Palmer from American sinus institute says you don't have to live that way. His patient Sherri Lockstercamp is proof of that. Welcome.Alright. We were talking during the commercial break, and you said, if you're living in Texas, you have a higher chance of dealing with allergies, but Houston does it bigger and better than anybody.

‍Dr. Palmer: So true, much more than Dallas Fortworth.‍

Speaker 1: Give us that comparison.

‍Dr. Palmer: In Houston and Austin as well, an allergy count that's bad is probably about 150 thousand. I live near Fortworth, and when it was 12, they thought it was bad.

‍Speaker 1: Oh, wow.

‍Dr. Palmer: So it's quite a bit different.

‍Speaker 1: And you felt every bit of it, didn't you?

‍Sherri: Oh yes. For many years.

‍Speaker 1: And so, for many years, what were you dealing with? I think sometimes, people, if they don't suffer from this, they don't understand how it definitely shuts you down.

‍Sherri: It does shut you down. Probably 20 plus years, I was dealing with just not being able to breathe. Literally, I couldn't leave the house without my nasal spray, just to get me through the day. When I was flying, I would get these sinus pressure headaches, just awful.

‍Speaker 1: And then taking all the over the counter medications.

‍Sherri: Yeah, that's true.

‍Speaker 1: How did you find out about this procedure we're about to talk about?

‍Sherri: Well, I was watching your show and I saw it on the television, and I was like, this sounds like something that could really work for me. I want to do the ... trying to see if this is right. So, I saw the doctor and he gave me just an initial exam, and he's like, you're a candidate.

‍Speaker 1: Right. Okay. What makes a candidate and what types of symptoms are we talking about? Some of the things that she mentioned.

‍Dr. Palmer: There's a lot of different things that can cause problems, have sinus ... but she's the perfect candidate for what we do. You heard what she said, she couldn't breathe, she couldn't fly, she had pressure headaches. What she's describing is a ventilation problem. She probably had sinus infections and didn't even know about it, but that's the point.

‍Speaker 1: As you said earlier, sometimes those sinus infections will clear themselves up, but you're miserable during the process.

‍Dr. Palmer: Exactly. So, what we do, is we reestablish ventilation. That cuts down on the negative pressure, you don't have the headaches, and then we shrink the mucosa in the nose so you can breathe. Because when your mucosa is swollen, your sinuses get blocked. It's a ventilation drainage problem. We did the balloon sinuplasty on her and opened her nasal passage and she's doing wonderfully.

‍Speaker 1: Now, there are a lot of folks who may have had a procedure several years ago, where they remove the tissue and the bone and all that type of stuff and it's a much more aggressive surgery, so they're thinking they might not want to do that. This is new technology, this is a new procedure.

‍Dr. Palmer: Exactly, it's not surgery at all, it's a procedure. It's essentially just dilating the sinuses and not damaging them. That's the point. You can't damage the sinuses. They work by mucociliary flow, and when you go in surgically and cut things, you make that inefficient.

‍Speaker 1: It causes problems, but that's not what you're doing right here. You're opening them up.‍

Dr. Palmer: No, we're opening them up.

‍Speaker 1: So, once they're opened up, is that for good?

‍Dr. Palmer: I hope so. Let's put it this way, it should be. Now, if somebody has bad allergies, I can't change their allergies with this procedure. I make people who have allergies live with them much better with this procedure.

‍Speaker 1: Because things are flowing now.

‍Dr. Palmer: But if they do get into that congestion again, it can easily be done again.

‍Speaker 1: Alright. So, you had the procedure done.

‍Sherri: I did.

‍Speaker 1: And, when did you first notice that-

‍Sherri: Within 12 hours.

‍Speaker 1: Really?

‍Sherri: Oh yeah, I had no swelling, I had no nothing, no bruising. I was able to just breathe immediately.

‍Speaker 1: How long did it take you before you weren't searching for your nasal spray?

‍Sherri: Well, three days, maybe.

‍Speaker 1: It's funny because people often times go, where's my nasal ... oh wait, I don't need it anymore.

‍Sherri: Exactly. Now, my new normal is, I can breathe. I don't have to be searching for the nasal spray. It's just a normal ... I was gonna say, you've heard that old adage if it's too good to be true it probably is. In this case, it's true. It's so good and it's true.

‍Speaker 1: You suffered all that time and didn't have to. Alright. When someone ... another important point she made, is that when she came in, you did an evaluation. People need to go to the right doctor, preferably you, right, to understand what the procedure is and what's actually happening. We think about the nose as just being right here, the nose is really ... all the stuff is connected.

‍Dr. Palmer: Exactly.

‍Speaker 1: Importance of going to the right doctor.

‍Dr. Palmer: Exactly. You need to go to somebody who has ... understands the sinuses and also understands balloon sinuplasty. I did thousands of endoscopic sinus cases and got reasonable results, but what I found, the less I did, the better I got with that procedure. But that procedure still damages the sinuses. This procedure does not.

‍Speaker 1: So, again, when you ask the doctor, this is the procedure you want. Cause a lot of time, people say, we can fix it, or if it's medications, but medications don't get to the root of the problem, right. They just deal with the symptoms. And so, now, she can breathe again.

‍Sherri: I can.

‍Speaker 1: Doesn't need her best friend anymore, that nasal spray.

‍Sherri: That's right.

‍Speaker 1: Alright. Thank you very much. To make your appointment with the American Sinus Institute, call 713-Balloon. That works out to be 713 225 5666. For more information on ... you can log onto AmericanSinus.com