A pilot study of the ability of the forced response test to discriminate between 3-year-old children with chronic otitis media with effusion or with recurrent acute otitis media

Abstract

Conclusions: When used to test 3-year-old children within 3 months of tympanostomy tube placement for recurrent acute otitis media (rAOM) or chronic otitis media with effusion (cOME) the forced response test (FRT) showed relatively minor differences in the active and passive functions of the eustachian tube. While the sample size was small, the high variability in all test parameters suggests that the FRT alone is not capable of distinguishing between children with different expressions of otitis media. Objective: The FRT was designed to measure the passive and active properties of the eustachian tube. We evaluated the ability of that test to discriminate groups of children with rAOM or cOME. Methods: Twenty-two ears (15 children) with a confirmed history of rAOM and 24 ears (17 children) with a confirmed history of cOME were tested at 3 years of age within 3 months of ventilation tube placement. The parameters of the FRT were compared between these groups using a two-tailed Student's t test and the frequencies of ears evidencing eustachian tube dilation with swallowing were compared between groups using a χ² test. Results: Passive resistance and one measure of active function were significantly higher in the rAOM group. The frequency of tubal dilation was not significantly different between groups. There were no differences in any of the FRT measures between cOME ears that did and did not have acute otitis media by history.

Keywords::

• Eustachian tube function
• middle ear disease
• diagnostic utility

Acknowledgments

Supported in part by NIH grant DC005832. The authors would like to thank Kathleen Tekely RN, for assistance with subject recruiting, and Juliane Banks BA, Maria Swarts BA, and Jenna El-Wagga for assistance with data abstraction and formatting.

Declaration of interest: The authors report no conflicts of interest. The authors alone are responsible for the content and writing of the paper.