Does smoking influence the surgical outcome of a myringoplasty?

To investigate the relationship between a patient's smoking habits and surgical outcome of his/her myringoplasty.

The medical records of patients who had undergone myringoplasty were retrospectively reviewed for age, gender, smoking habits, perforation size, perforation location, surgical technique, graft material, and surgical outcome. Surgical success was defined as the perforation having remained closed 12 months postoperatively.

The study group included 65 patients (41 females and 24 males, age range 18-79, average 35.9 years). Eight females were smokers (19.5%) compared to 10 male smokers (41.7%, p = 0.054). The overall surgical success rate was 63/65 (96.9%) with the 2 failures occurring in nonsmoker females. The graft taken was temporalis fascia in 20/21 (95.2%) and tragal perichondrium in 43/44 (97.7%) cases (p = 0.587). There was no significant gender-based (39/41 vs. 24/24, p = 0.272) or smoker status-based (45/47 for nonsmokers vs. 18/18 for smokers, p = 0.374) success rate. There was no significant difference in fascia versus perichondrium grafting success for smokers (p = 0.421) versus nonsmokers (p = 0.583).

Primary myringoplasty performed by an experienced otologist had a surgical success rate of 96.9% for closure of tympanic membrane defects, regardless of the choice of graft material, perforation size or location, and patient's age, gender and smoking habits.