Outcomes of Tympanostomy Tube Insertion for Recurrent Acute Otitis Media in Pediatric Patients

Background: Recurrent acute otitis media (RAOM) is characterized by 3 or more episodes in 6 months or 4 or more episodes in 12 months (1 recent episode), which causes a lot of pain and sleeping difficulties, school absences, parental work loss, and hearing/language delay due to chronic effusions where collected 112 patients from Iraq furthermore Tympanostomy tube insertion (TTI) is used as an initial treatment of the chosen children who are unresponsive to medical therapy, with the aim to decrease the rate of AOM, enhance middle-ear ventilation/hearing, and prevent the effects of development as well as the inclusion criteria were preoperative information and 12 months follow-up; the exclusion criteria were alternative pathological or missing records. Annual AOM episodes (complete resolution: 0; improvement: 0; failure: 1), hearing (dB change), missed school days, tube retention, time to first postoperative AOM, and complications (e.g., otorrhea, extrusion) were some of the outcomes. Descriptive statistics, paired t-tests, Pearson correlations, and binary logistic regression (SPSS; p < 0.05) were used in the analyses, where results Baseline: mean 5.2 1.8 preoperative AOM episodes; 63.4% daycare; 30.4%adenoid hypertrophy. The findings were improved after operation: AOM 0.7 1.1(difference -4.5, p < 0.001); hearing 18.3 6.2 dB(difference -14.2, p < 0.001); antibiotics -4.1/year(p < 0.001); school days lost -10.2/year(p < 0.001). Success: 60.7 resolution, 88.4% improvement, 11.6% failure.