Surgical Outcomes
No complications were noted following the surgery in either of our study
groups. Regardless of the surgical procedure, all patients demonstrated
improvement in the air-bone gap after the surgery. The results showed no
significant difference between the pediatric and adult groups with
respect to the rates of surgical success and postoperative hearing gain;
the same was observed whether VTI, tympanoplasty, or cholesteatoma TEES
management was performed. Both VTI and mastoidectomy had 100% success
rates in each group. All patients recovered well, with the patients
having either satisfactory ventilation tube function after VTI or no
residual or recurrent cholesteatoma after mastoidectomy. We found no
significant difference between children and adults regarding to the
success rate of tympanoplasty, although the rate was lower in the
pediatric patients (80% in children vs. 96% in adults, p=0.253) (Table
2).
We observed no significant difference between these two groups with
regard to rates of surgical success, postoperative complications, and
postoperative hearing gain when VTI, tympanoplasty, or TEES management
of cholesteatoma was performed. All patients achieved improved air-bone
gap, and none experienced residual or recurrent disease during the 18-
to 48-month postoperative follow-up after the management of
cholesteatoma. Therefore, we believe that TEES may also have a
satisfactory surgical outcome in children as well as in adults.