Bloody phlegm

Hello,

I have had sinus infection's for over 10 yrs now. I recently had a cat-scan & found that I have a deviated septum. I will be having septum surgery pretty soon & was wondering if anyone knows why I would have blood in my phlegm. When I wake up in the morning, I always cough up a lot of phlem but have noticed in the past few months, I also have experienced some blood in my phlem & also when I blow my nose. I also have some green phlegm that I cough up. I brought it to my ENT doctor's attention & he had no idea why I had blood in my phlegm. I was reading on the internet that its possibly due to infection. Can you also tell me if having the surgery will aleviate the excess phlegm & coughing that I experience.

[National Jewish]

There are several reasons for having blood in coughed up sputum.  The most likely, in the case you have described, is that it is coming from an inflammation in your upper airway that periodically has some bleeding.  This is not uncommon in chronic sinusitis.  If it increases or is evident even when you are not coughing, it has to be evaluated.

The second question is much more difficult to answer.  If the septum repair leads to a cure of the chronic sinusitis due to better drainage from the sinus, then your problem will be dramatically better soon after the surgery.  If the problem is greater in scope than just the septum deviation, then this problem may not go away or may go away and come back soon thereafter.