IMPORTANCE OF MASTOID PNEUMATIZATION ON SECRETORY OTITIS-MEDIA

Secretory otitis media is the most common middle ear disease of childh ood. It heals spontaneously, by medical therapy or by minor surgical p rocedures in most of the cases. Sequelae such as retraction pockets an d adhesive otitis that lead to cholesteatoma rarely occur, but initial y it is hard to diagnose which patient will acquire a sequela. It is w ell known that mastoid pneumatization is poor in the patients who had complications like retraction pocket, adhesive otitis and cholesterol granuloma. The aim of this study was to determine if any relationship exists between mastoid pneumatization and secretory otitis media. Late ral mastoid X-rays of 47 children with secretory otitis media were eva luated. After 2 months of follow-up with medical therapy, 30 of the 47 patients needed ventilation tube insertion. The remaining 17 patients showed total recovery with medicines only. Control X-rays of the oper ated patients were taken 6 months after the operation. Mastoid pneumat izations of patients healed with medicine were compared with the opera ted patients. There were statistically significant differences between the mastoid pneumatizations of surgically and medically treated group s. In addition we observed a statistically significant difference betw een the mastoid areas of the preoperative and the postoperative X-rays . We concluded that mastoid pneumatization might be considered as a pr ognostic indicator in secretory otitis media. The estimated prognosis is poor when the mastoid pneumatization is poor. (C) 1997 Elsevier Sci ence Ireland Ltd.