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Mucociliary clearance is an important physiological mechanism for clearing the upper airways. Previously, it has been shown that different disease processes and drugs affect ciliary beat frequency (CBF). Namely, epinephrine has been shown to accelerate CBF in various animal models. Additionally, phase contrast microscopy (PCM) and spectrally encoded interferometric microscopy (SEIM) have been used to image dynamic tissue of the upper airway. Herein, we explore the effects of epinephrine on human sinonasal mucosa through PCM and SEIM. Sinonasal mucosa was harvested from patients undergoing endoscopic sinus surgery (ESS). Tissue was imaged using PCM and SEIM, maintaining physiological temperature through the use of warmed HBSS and a heating plate. Videos were taken before addition of any drugs as baseline. Epinephrine was diluted to 1 mg/mL (1:1000) and 1mL of solution was introduced to the sinonasal mucosa. PCM and SEIM was performed after to determine effects of epinephrine on CBF. Data analysis was performed using MATLAB (Mathworks, Natick, Massachusetts). Human sinonasal mucosa, taken from various anatomic locations, showed CBF values on PCM and SEIM consistent with what has been shown in previous literature. Upon addition of epinephrine to sinonasal mucosa, a marked increase in CBF was observed in both PCM and SEIM. In conclusion, the addition of epinephrine to sinonasal mucosa increased ciliary beat frequency. This validates the use of SEIM for determining CBF in sinonasal tissues. Further studies include adding to our sample size to determine a more accurate magnitude of increase of CBF.
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