Otologic evaluation of patients with primary antibody deficiency

Abstract

Common variable immunodeficiency (CVID) represents the most frequent primary immunodeficiency, often encountered in the ENT clinical practice. The clinical spectrum of CVID is quite broad, but otitis media are certainly among the most common clinical manifestations. This prospective study enrolled 60 patients (34 males, 26 females) with a previous diagnosis of CVID with the aim of performing an otologic evaluation and a more precision characterization of incidence, diagnosis, and treatment of otitis media in this group of patients. In consideration that Eustachian tube dysfunction (ETD) could be the 'primum movens' of otitis media, we wanted to assess whether a Eustachian tube dysfunction was present in these patients. Besides, we propose a possible diagnostic algorithm of middle ear pathologies to use in all cases of primary antibody deficiency patients. Results of our otologic examination showed that: 5 % of patients had chronic suppurative otitis media, 25 % bilateral otitis media with effusion and 10 % reported unilateral OME with associated contralateral ETD. There was bilateral isolated ETD and unilateral isolated ETD in 5 and 15 % of patients, respectively. All patients with unilateral OME had associated contralateral ETD. Finally, 40 % of patients were bilaterally negative at otoscopic examination and all otologic tests.

The Impact of Unilateral Sensorineural Hearing Loss on Quality of Life of Sub-Himalayan Population

“…Patients with USNHL lack the advantages of binaural hearing, which includes temporal summation, sound localization, and most importantly, the ability to understand speech in a noisy environment [ 4 ]. USNHL can be caused by various cause such as idiopathic sudden SNHL, trauma, acoustic neuroma, Meniere's disease, mumps, infections, noise induced, and common variable immunodeficiency [ 5 ].…”