Spontaneous improvement in ears with middle ear disease

Abstract

The ‘healthy-baby-clinics’ in Göteborg, as in all Sweden, test all 4-year-olds with pure tone screening (failure criterion > 20 dB). Those who fail are referred to an oto-audiological health center. In an effort to prevent over-referrals of false positives as well as under-referrals of false negatives all referred children in this study have been tested with pure tone audiometry supplemented by tympanometry. At the oto-audiological health center a test program including 3 tests with intervals of 6 weeks was initiated. Failure criteria were middle ear pressure < − 150 mm H 2O and hearing loss (HL) in the frequency range 0.125–8 kHz > 20 dB. In Göteborg (430,000 inhabitants) 5928 4-year-olds were tested at the ‘healthy-baby-clinics’ during 1980. Of these 498 (8.4%) failed in pure tone screening, 248 of which are included in the present study. At the first check in our test program, which was performed 3–8 weeks after referral, only 45% of the children were abnormal. Of these 60% normalized during the test program. Thus of the ears referred following the pure tone screening at the ‘healthy-baby-clinics’ only 18% remained after 15–20 weeks for referral to an ENT-doctor.