code makes it difficult to understand the incidence of ENS. Qualitative feedback from ENTs that treat this disease indicate that the incidence is underestimated but the condition is debilitating for those that have it. Untreated, the condition can cause significant and long term physical and emotional distress in some people; some of the initial presentations on the condition described people who committed suicide. Research on safety and efficacy of existing treatments is limited to a handful of published studies with a small number of participants and self-reported results from specialists treating this condition. History As early as 1914, Dr Albert Mason reported cases of "a condition resembling atrophic rhinitis" with "a dryness of the nose and throat" following turbinectomy. Mason called the turbinates "the most important organ in the nose" and claimed they were "slaughtered and removed with discriminate abandon more than any other part of the body, with the possible exception of the prepuce." The term "Empty Nose Syndrome" was first used by Eugene Kern and Monika Stenkvist of the Mayo Clinic in 1994. Kern and Eric Moore published a case study of 242 people with secondary atrophic rhinitis in 2001 and were the first to attribute the cause to prior sinonasal surgery in the scientific literature. Whether the condition existed or not and whether surgery was a cause, was hotly debated at Nose 2000, a meeting of the International Rhinologic Society that occurs every four years, and continued to be debated thereafter at scientific meetings and in the literature; as an example of how heated the debate became, in a 2002 textbook on nasal reconstruction techniques, two surgeons from University of Utrecht called turbinectomies a "nasal crime". Society and culture As of 2016, according to Spencer Payne, a doctor who studies ENS, many people with ENS symptoms commonly encounter doctors who consider their symptoms to be purely psychological; according to Subinoy Das, another doctor who studies ENS, recognition among rhinologists was growing. People who experience ENS have formed online communities to support one another and to advocate for recognition, prevention, and treatments for ENS. References External links American Rhinologic Society: Empty nose syndrome United Kingdom National Health Service: Atrophic Rhinitis Causes Nose disorders Human head and neck