LANGUAGE-DEVELOPMENT IN CHILDREN WITH RECURRENT ACUTE OTITIS-MEDIA DURING THE 1ST 3 YEARS OF LIFE - FOLLOW-UP-STUDY FROM BIRTH TO 7 YEARS OF AGE

From a cohort of 113 children, followed prospectively from birth durin g the first three years of life regarding different aspects of acute o titis media (AOM), two study groups were selected for the present inve stigation: 13 children with recurrent AOM (rAOM, i.e. at least six epi sodes of AOM during a 12-month period), and 29 children without any AO M episode. The purpose of this study was to analyse the possible effec ts of early onset rAOM on language development as assessed at four and seven years of age at phoniatric and linguistic examinations performe d blindly. There were no differences between the two groups on any of the linguistic analyses performed, although the rAOM group manifested a somewhat better performance on auditory discrimination tests at four years of age. The results of the present study show that rAOM during the first three years of life, in otherwise healthy children, does not cause a detectable delay of language development at four and seven ye ars of age.