Lasting Effects of Otitis Media with Effusion on Language Skills and Listening Performance

Abstract

Klausen O, Møller P, Holmefjord A, Reisaeter S, Asbjørnsen A. Lasting effects of otitis media with effusion on language skills and listening performance. Acta Otolaryngol 2000; Suppl 543: 73 -76.Otitis media with effusion (OME) and its related hearing loss has been associated with delayed language development, particularly if the disease is recurrent or of long duration. To find out more about the long-term effects of OME on language skills and listening performance we performed a retrospective study. A group of 19 otherwise healthy 9-year-old children with an earlier history of long lasting bilateral OME were compared with an age-matched control group of 19 children with no history of OME or hearing impairment and normal otoscopy, tympanometry and audiometry. The children in the OME group had an average of 1.4 treatments with ventilation tubes. Mean hearing levels for 500, 1,000 and 2,000 Hz in the OME group were 13 dB in the right ear and 11.3 dB in the left ear. All children were examined with the Illinois test of psycholinguistic abilities (ITPA), test for articulation, Boston naming test, dichotic listening tests with additional tasks of directed attention and tests for word and sound discrimination. In the OME group we found significant lower scores in the articulation test and small, but significant, lower scores in the test regarding sound discrimination. No significant differences on other language skills were detected in the ITPA test or Boston naming test. We found a significantly higher degree of right ear advantage and lower attentional effectiveness in the OME-group.

Teste de Habilidade de Atenção Auditiva Sustentada (THAAS) em crianças de sete anos com fissura labiopalatina

“…5 Asbjornsen et al 3 applied a dichotic consonantvowel test and found that the group with a history of otitis media performed worse in sustaining attention to auditory events, which was similar to our findings. Klausen et al 33 used a similar dichotic consonant-vowel test and concluded that OME affects the ability to persist and focus attention on auditory events.…”

“…The type of attentiveness that was assessed is not always specified, and is done by assessing the behavior of children; [24][25][26][27][28][29] other studies use individual tests to evaluate a specific type of attention. [30][31][32][33] Attention difficulties have been reported in subjects with reading impairment, 34 dyslexia, 35 aphasia, 36 sclerosis, 37 ADHD, 38 APD, 39 sleep deprivation,40 and cleft lip and palate. 32,28 Studies relating sustained auditory attentiveness and cleft lip and palate were not found in our review; we thus tried to correlate this study with those that included subjects with a history of recurring otitis.…”

Birth characteristics and recurrent otitis media with effusion in young children

“…Nevertheless, several studies have shown that persistent and/or recurrent OME in childhood may have detrimental effects on hearing, behaviour and speech or language development. Thus, OME is a topic for concern, which requires prevention and treatment [6][7][8][9]. Early identification of groups with a high risk of recurrent OME would enable care providers to apply efficient treatment policies.…”

Etiological diagnosis of bilateral, sensorineural hearing impairment in a pediatric Greek population

“…Children suffering from otitis media with effusion were reevaluated one or more months later, after effusion was resolved. If effusion persisted for more than 2 months, audiologic examination was performed taking into consideration the changes brought by otits media with effusion on audiometric measurements [27][28][29]. A flow chat of the protocol is presented in Fig.…”