Background: The relationship between frontal cells to frontal sinus disease pathology remains an understudied area. Caucasian population were studied in most previous studies of the pneumatization pattern of the frontal recess, whereas there are very few reports on the prevalence of frontal recess cells and their relation with frontal sinusitis in India. The purpose of this review is to determine the frequency of occurrence of frontal cells and to determine whether the size of the frontal isthmus or the presence of frontal cells is related to the presence of frontal sinus disease in various articles. There are a lot of studies that appear in the Western literature, but there are less Indian studies on this subject.
Materials and methods: In this article, we reviewed around 25 various randomized, clinical, and experimental trials conducted between 1940 and 2016 and which were published in various Indian and American journals. The literature search was conducted after using the key words chronic rhino-sinusitis, Kuhn frontal cells, frontal recess, frontal sinusitis, functional endoscopic sinus surgery, and computed tomography from Pubmed, Cochrane, Proquest, and Google Scholar.
Conclusion: There was no significant relation between any particular frontal recess cell and the size of the nasofrontal isthmus as the cause for frontal sinusitis in majority of studies, and therefore we concluded that various factors, along with the pattern of pneumatization and mucosal edema, contributed to the pathogenesis of chronic frontal sinusitis.