Substantial contributions to the conception or design of the work; or the acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of data for the work; AND (2) Drafting the work or revising it critically for important intellectual content; AND (3) Final approval of the version to be published; AND (4) Agreement to be accountable for all aspects of the work in ensuring that questions related to the accuracy or integrity of any part of the work are appropriately investigated and resolved.Funding and support: By Annals policy, all authors are required to disclose any and all commercial, financial, and other relationships in any way related to the subject of this article as per ICMJE conflict of interest guidelines (see www.icmje.org). The authors have stated that no such relationships exist.

Chronic sinusitis is a relatively common diagnosis throughout the US. In patients with an otherwise unremarkable medical history the treatment is typically supportive, requiring only clinical evaluation. We present the case of a 25-year-old male with a history of chronic sinusitis that was brought to our emergency department with new-onset seizure. Three days before he had presented to his usual care facility with two days of headache and fever and was discharged stating headache, subjective fever, and neck stiffness. After further investigation he was diagnosed with a mixed anaerobic epidural abscess. The evaluation and management of chronic sinusitis are based on the presence of symptoms concerning for complication. Prompt investigation of complicated sinusitis is essential in preventing debilitating and fatal sequelae. Our case study underscores the importance of early diagnosis and appropriate management.

Traumatic injuries afflict more than 5 million people globally every year. Current and past animal research has demonstrated association among alcohol, trauma, and impaired immune function, whereas human registries have shown association between alcohol and morbidity as well as mortality. The purpose of this study is to elucidate the immune interactions with alcohol in traumatically injured patients. We prospectively enrolled 379 patients after trauma at three medical centers in the Surgical Critical Care Initiative. Plasma was analyzed using Luminex for up to 35 different cytokines. Collected samples were grouped by patients with detectable plasma alcohol levels versus those without. Univariate testing determined differences in analytes between groups. We built Bayesian belief networks with multiple minimum descriptive lengths to compare the two groups. All 379 patient samples were analyzed. Two hundred eighty‐two (74.4%) patients were men, and 143 (37.7%) were White. Patients had a median intensive care unit length of stay (LOS) of 5.8 days and hospital LOS of 12 days. Using single variate analyses, eight different cytokines were differentially associated with alcohol. Cytokines IL‐12 and IL‐6 were important nodes in both models and IL‐10 was a prominent node in the nonalcohol model. This study found select immune function differed between traumatically injured patients with measurable serum alcohol levels as compared with those without. Traumatically injured patients with positive blood alcohol content appear less able to inhibit inflammatory stress. Alcohol appears to suppress pro‐inflammatory IL‐12 and IL‐6, whereas patients without alcohol have greater levels of anti‐inflammatory IL‐10 expressed at injury and may better regulate anti‐inflammatory pathways. Future studies should determine the relationship with these markers with clinically oriented outcomes.

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Funding and support: By Annals policy, all authors are required to disclose any and all commercial, financial, and other relationships in any way related to the subject of this article as per ICMJE conflict of interest guidelines (see www.icmje.org). The authors have stated that no such relationships exist.