Efficacy of myringoplasty in older people

The aim of current investigation was to analyze the efficacy of myringoplasty in an elderly population. The medical records of 12 males and 9 females, aged 65-90 years (mean 70.7 years), who underwent myringoplasty between 2007 and 2013 were retrospectively reviewed for age, gender, co-morbidities, perforation size and location, pre- and postoperative pure tone averages of air/bone thresholds at 500, 1,000, 2,000 and 3,000 Hz, graft material, postoperative complications and surgical outcome. The most frequent co-morbidities included hypertension (n = 8), hyperlipidemia (n = 7), diabetes mellitus (n = 5) and ischemic heart disease (n = 4). Fifteen patients had two or more co-morbidities. All surgeries were performed via a trans-canal approach. Seventeen patients had central perforations and four patients had marginal perforations. Temporalis fascia, perichondrium or chondro-perichondrial graft and fat were used as grafting material in 9, 11 and 1 patient, respectively. The post-operative complications were infection (n = 4) and tragal seroma (n = 1). Surgical outcome was successful in 16/21 patients with graft take rates of 89, 72 and 0% for temporalis fascia, perichondrium/cartilage, and fat, respectively. Pre-operative audiometric data were available for all 21 patients; however, the post-operative data were available for only 15 of them. Myringoplasty in older people was a safe procedure with a 76.2% surgical success rate in the current study. The choice of graft material, perforation size, gender and associated co-morbidities had no significant effect on achieving an intact tympanic membrane and a dry ear. The audiometric results did not show significant changes following myringoplasty.