Dr. Eugene Kern, who coined the term "empty nose syndrome", claims that this condition often gets worse over the years through increasing wear and tear of the remaining mucosa in the nasal cavity, because the lack of turbinates leaves the mucosa overexposed to unduly patent currents of unfiltered, and under-conditioned airflow on every inspiring breath. In fact, he maintains that there is an unknown threshold of loss of turbinate tissue from which the nasal mucosa can not recuperate from the daily onslaught of direct airflow. Kern and Moore conducted a large retrospective study of 242 patients which they carefully examined over several years at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester (Minnesota, US), all of whom had undergone some form of partial or radical turbinectomy, following which they had developed symptoms of atrophic rhinitis. They called this condition "empty nose syndrome" to depict how unnatural these noses looked in CT findings and upon physical examination. They emphasized how negatively this condition had affected their quality of life and sense of well being and the fact that in many of the patients the symptoms seemed to worsen over the years, indicating further damage and wear and tear due to the loss of turbinate protection, as there was no other cause that could explain this.