Management of the hearing impaired child with serous otitis media

The majority of research and informative papers dealing with otitis media with effusion (OME) are concerned with normally hearing children who display a mild conductive hearing loss associated with the infection. In contrast, the target of our manuscript is the child who has a previously documented sensori-neural hearing loss that is complicated by the onset of a middle ear infection. It is our clinical experience that OME in the hearing impaired child must be treated aggressively in order to adequately override the additional loss that accompanies a middle ear infection. A number of our patients are children who have various degrees of sensori-neural hearing loss. A significant number of these children also have experienced bouts of OME. The case studies presented will examine the effect that middle ear effusion has had on these hearing impaired children and discuss the importance of vigorous treatment of OME in hearing impaired children. Our intention is to alert the otologist and the audiologist to the possibility of OME in the hearing impaired child and to demonstrate the need for and the benefit of aggressive medical and/or surgical intervention.