Otitis media with effusion in nasal polyposis and outcomes following surgery: A longitudinal observational study

In patients with nasal polyposis (NP), otitis media with effusion (OME) seems to be a marker of severity of the inflammatory process occurring in those patients. The aim was to assess whether OME could represent a marker of resistance to the surgical treatment of NP.

Longitudinal observational cohort study including patients between January 1991 and January 2017. Mean follow-up was 7.4 years.

Tertiary-care hospital centre.

Patients with NP who underwent surgery (radical bilateral sphenoethmoidectomy).

Four outcomes reflecting resistance to the surgical treatment: a clinical score of rhinologic symptoms, the mean number of systemic corticosteroids treatment per year, the recurrence rate of polyps and the rate of reoperation.

A total of 266 patients were included (63.9% of men, mean age 48 years). In multivariate linear mixed-effects regression, when compared to patients without OME, patients with OME presented a similar clinical score of symptoms (coefficient 0.09, 95% confidence interval (CI) -0.25 to 0.06, P-value = 0.24) and a borderline higher mean number of systemic corticosteroids treatments per year (coefficient 0.11, 95% CI 0.003-0.23, P-value = 0.04). In multivariate Cox regression analyses, patients with OME had a similar reoperation rate than patients without OME (hazard ratio (HR) 0.29, 95% CI 0.06-1.50) and a similar recurrence rate of polyps (HR 0.59, 95% CI 0.23-1.53).

In patients with NP, OME is not a marker of surgical resistance. Those patients should be managed similarly than patients without, and similar outcomes following surgery should be expected.