This Article  • Full text  • PDF  • Reply to article  • Send to a friend  • Save in My Folder  • Save to citation manager  • Permissions  Citing Articles  • Contact me when this article is cited  Related Content  • Similar articles in this journal  Topic Collections  • Audiology  • Congenital Anomalies of Head & Neck  • Hearing Loss/ Deafness  • Middle/ External Ear Disorders  • Pediatric Otolaryngology  • Pediatrics  • Congenital Malformations  • Neonatology and Infant Care  • Alert me on articles by topic  Social Bookmarking   What's this?

Ginny Curtin, RN, MS, PNP; Anna H. Messner, MD; Kay W. Chang, MD

Arch Otolaryngol Head Neck Surg. 2009;135(8):748-751.

Objective  To compare the incidence of otorrhea in a group of infants with cleft palate (CP) and tympanostomy tubes before and after surgical repair of the CP.

Design  Prospective observational study.

Setting  Otolaryngology clinic at a tertiary care children's hospital.

Patients  Thirty-three infants with CP and middle ear effusions who underwent tympanostomy tube placement. Subjects were observed from the time of tube placement until 6 months after CP repair.

Main Outcome Measure  Incidence of otorrhea before and after CP repair.

Results  Subjects were observed a mean of 6.3 months before CP repair and 6 months after CP repair. Before CP repair, 11 of 33 infants (33%) had no episodes of otorrhea, compared with 22 of 33 (67%) after CP repair (P = .007). Fourteen infants (43%) had 2 or more episodes of otorrhea before CP repair compared with 2 (6%) after CP repair (P = .001). Before CP repair, significantly fewer tubes were patent at the time of the audiologic evaluation compared with after CP repair (39 of 62 [63%] vs 52 of 66 [79%]; P = .048). Average speech reception threshold for the infants with tympanostomy tubes before CP repair was 18.1 dB compared with 12.6 dB after CP repair (P = .01).

Conclusion  The incidence of otorrhea after tympanostomy tube placement before CP repair is higher than the incidence after CP repair, although more than half of all infants (19 [58%]) had either 1 or no episodes of otorrhea before CP repair.

Author Affiliations: Department of Pediatric Otolaryngology–Head & Neck Surgery, Lucile Packard Children's Hospital at Stanford (Ms Curtin), and Departments of Otolaryngology–Head & Neck Surgery and Pediatrics, Stanford University (Drs Messner and Chang), Palo Alto, California.

CiteULike    Connotea    Del.icio.us    Digg    Reddit    Technorati    Twitter     What's this?