Effect of Adding Oral Steroids to Antibiotics in Treatment of Chronic Otitis Media with Effusion

Chronic otitis media with effusion (COME) is one of the most common diseases in otolaryngology. The most important complication of COME is development delay of cognitive and linguistic skills due to hearing loss. Treatment of COME is both surgical and medical. Because of the high cost of operation and its complications, many studies have been done to replace it with medical therapy. Oral steroids are one of the most important drugs which are studied for treatment of COME.

Purpose of present study was to examine the effect of adding oral steroids to antibiotics in treatment of otitis media with effusion.

The study was carried out as double- blind controlled clinical trials and eighty cases of 4 - 10 years old patients who had type B tympanometry in both ears were divided into two equal groups. Forty patients received only Amoxicillin (Group 1) and the remaining received Amoxicillin with prednisolone. (Group2) Tympanometry was repeated after two weeks. Type A tympanometry in both ears was supposed as improvement and the other form indicated no improvement.

In Group (1) only 2 out of 40 patients (%5) and in Group (2) 11 out of 40 patients (27/5%) were improved. There was a statistically difference in improvement between the two groups,(P=0/013) which was greater in group 2.

The results of this study confirmed previous studies and showed that the combination of steroids with Antibiotics has a greater efficacy than antibiotics alone. At the same time, becauses of steroids' potential adverse effects, their routine use is not advocated until greater studies will carried out.