The effect of inlay butterfly cartilage tympanoplasty technique on compliance

IBCT technique should be preferred owing to its high graft survival rate and ABG gain. While no significant difference was found in middle ear pressures between ears that underwent IBCT and normal ears, compliance values were found to be decreased in patients undergoing IBCT. However, the lack of correlation between ABG gain and compliance values indicated that compliance increase had no effect on post-operative ABG results.

The aim of the present study was to compare tympanometric and audiological parameters in patients undergoing inlay butterfly cartilage tympanoplasty (IBCT) with their normal ears and to determine their difference with normal ear tympanometric parameters.

Overall, 25 patients that underwent an operation between August 2010-May 2014 were included in the present study. In 13 of these patients, the ear that did not undergo operation was normal. 0.5, 1, 2, 4 kHz pure sound average values, tympanometric measurements and compliance values of normal and operated ears were compared.

The graft survival rate in patients was found to be 92%. Mean pre-operative air-bone gap (ABG) was 16.4 ± 5.4 in patients, while mean post-operative ABG was 10.9 ± 5.8, with a statistically significant difference (p = 0.001) While there was no significant difference between operated and normal ears of patients in terms of middle ear pressure (0.441), compliance values were significantly higher in normal ears than those in operated ears (0.032). When post-operative ABG gain was compared with compliance values, no significant correlation was found between ABG gain and compliance measurements (r = -0.025 and p = 0.936).