OBLITERATIVE frontal sinusitis as a sequela to chronic infection of the frontal sinus is an infrequent occurrence. Tilley1 was the first who called attention to this form of sinusitis in an address before the Royal Society of Medicine in London in 1928. In 1936, Skillern2 gave a comprehensive report about the pathological process of the disease and described five such cases in which treatment with radical surgery was successful.
The process of obliteration of the sinus starts with a low-grade-hyperplastic mucosal inflammation of slow development resulting in the formation of granulations and involvement of the periosteum and ultimately in a thickening osteitis. It is an "osteogenesis" in contrast to "osteomyelitis." The latter is a destructive osteitis, the tissues being overwhelmed and destroyed by invading organisms. In osteogenesis the tissues proliferate, walling off or encapsulating the invading organism.
The exact process starts, after an infection, from within the sinus