Chronic disease of the paranasal sinuses offers its greatest challenge to therapy when the frontal sinus is the site of the infection. This cavity has problems peculiar to itself which make its successful surgical treatment more difficult than the treatment of any other nasal sinus.
The frontal sinus is the most poorly endowed by nature to withstand, or recover from, an infectious invasion. It is placed more deeply in dense bone, its lining membrane is thinner and more poorly nourished than that of the other sinuses and its drainage is the longest and the most devious. Being part and parcel of the ethmoid system and largely an outgrowth of those cells, its position, size and emptying mechanism are arranged to conform with the developmental vagaries of the ethmoid labyrinth. The nasal floor of the frontal sinus is mostly formed by the ethmoid bone, and therefore disease of the cells of