Study of Myringoplasty in Wet and Dry Ears in Mucosal Type of Chronic Otitis Media

Introduction: Chronic otitis media is the most common cause of hearing impairment in the developing countries. Hearing loss can have serious effects on day to day life. Ear discharge in chronic otitis media may continue for months to years with increasing hearing impairment and also life threatening infective complications, which is more common in active and also in inactive disease form as well. Myringoplasty is an operative procedure to close the perforation in tympanic membrane. Aim: To compare the success rate of graft uptake in dry and wet ears and to compare the postoperative hearing improvement in dry and wet ear following myringoplasty. Materials and Methods: The comparative study was carried out on total 30 patients with chronic otitis media with central perforation. Of these 15 patients belong to dry ear group and 15 patients with wet ear group. These selected patients on simple random basis were subjected to clinical, audiological, radiological and laboratory investigations and one day before operation, patients were admitted to the hospital and written informed consent was taken in all cases. All patients underwent underlay technique myringoplasty. Postoperatively all patients were evaluated for graft uptake and hearing improvement by pure tone audiometry at 3rd month follow-up. Results: In our study, the successful graft uptake was seen in 80% in dry ear and 73.3% in wet ear, statistically p-value (chi(2)=1.24) is (p>0.05) which is insignificant. Postoperatively hearing gain was (0-5 dB) in 3 patients (20%) with dry ear and 2 patients (13.5%) with wet ear; (6-10 dB), in 4 patients (26.6%) with dry ear and 6 patients (40%) with wet ear; more than 10 dB in 5 patients (33.3%) with dry ear and 3 patients (20%) with wet ear, statistically p-value is chi(2)= 1.24 (p>0.05) which is not significant. Conclusion: In this study the success rate of graft uptake and hearing improvement is found almost equal in dry and wet ear by using underlay technique of myringoplasty, also found statistically insignificant.