Immunosuppressed patients are often susceptible to upper airway infections, especially those of the paranasal sinuses. These can sometimes jeopardize treatment success and even lead to a fatal outcome.Objective: To study the paranasal microbiology of immunosuppressed patients with clinical evidence of rhinosinusitis, and compare it with that from immunocompetent patients. Material and method:Retrospective study, in which 42 immunosuppressed and 16 immunocompetent patients were selected. All had clinically evident acute or recurrent rhinosinusitis and were submitted to ethmoidal or sphenoid sinusectomy or maxillary sinus puncture to gather material for microbiological cultures.Results: There were 92% positive cultures, and 21% were negative. Of the positive cultures, 38% were bacterial, with P. aeruginosa being the most frequent agent; 64% were fungal, which occurred in the most immunocompromised patients. In the immunocompetent group, there were 62.5% positive cultures and 37.5% negative ones. All the positive ones were bacterial, with no fungi. Conclusion:Transplant recipients were prone to develop bacterial rhinosinusitis by Gram positive and Gram negative agents, the most common of the latter being Pseudomonas aeruginosa. Fungal infections occurred in the severely immunosuppressed, and it was absent in immunocompetent patients. Braz J Otorhinolaryngol. 2011;77(4):522-5. ORIGINAL ARTICLE BJORL

Objective. Asses the change in neck staging in patients with squamous cell carcinoma (SCC) of oral cavity and oropharynx after new methodology for histopathological analysis of lymph nodes of surgical specimens from neck dissections, with step serial sections of all harvested lymph nodes, in clinically neck negative patients (cN0). It was also studied the impact of this changes on survival. Materials and methods. Retrospective study with 21 patients previously classified as cN0 undergoing surgery for excision of the primary tumor and elective neck dissection. Initially was held to revise the original pathology slides and, subsequently, step-serial sectioning with 5 µm thick and re-examination of the slides. In order to assess the impact of change in disease-free survival was held Kaplan-Meier analysis (IC 95%). Results. After conventional evaluation, 14 patients were found to be without lymphatic metastases (pN0) and seven (33%) were affected (pN+). The analysis with step serial section has detected three other patients with lymphatic metastases, previously classified as pN0, and one patient previously as N1 increased to N2b with 10 pN(+) cases (48%). There was an increase of 43% in patients with lymph node metastases and 19% of increase in neck staging after the new histopathological standardization, but without impact on survival (p = 0.554). Conclusion. Analysis of lymph nodes in surgical specimens of neck dissections with step-serial sectioning allowed an increase of 43% of necks with occult metastases and increase of neck staging in 19% when compared to conventional technique.