Limited Audiological Assessment Results in Children With Otitis Media With Effusion

Objectives:Clinical practice guidelines predicate the need for evaluation of hearing in children with otitis media with effusion (OME). The objective of this work was to characterize the completeness of hearing assessment results in children with OME.Design:Forty participants with OME completed two full audiological assessments, one in a clinical setting and a second in a research setting. An additional 14 participants without OME completed a single audiological assessment in the research setting as a control group. The success of various behavioral and objective audiometric tests in each setting was quantified and evaluated.Results:Findings indicate that ear-specific behavioral audiometric information is substantially limited in children with OME, particularly in clinical settings. In contrast, objective testing including tympanometry and otoacoustic emission testing was largely successful.Conclusions:Ear-specific behavioral audiometric information is limited in children with OME and, consequently, consideration of these data for use as part of clinical decision making is also limited. Objective tests were more successful but are not direct measures of hearing.