The Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Otitis Media

Choi, Soo Young; Yon, Dong Keon; Choi, Yong-Sung; Lee, Jin-Seok; Park, Ki Ho; Lee, Young Ju; Kim, Sung‐Soo; Kim, Sang Hoon; Yeo, Seung Geun

doi:10.3390/v14112457

Cited by 16 publications

(6 citation statements)

References 36 publications

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“…Our findings regarding the observed differences in both trends in episodes [ 47 – 51 ] and low-value services are in line with previous studies in hospital care [ 27 , 52 – 54 ]. Hence, both the number and rates of episodes and low-value care provision were largely affected during the first months of the COVID-19 pandemic.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 92%

Trends in low-value GP care during the COVID-19 pandemic: a retrospective cohort study

Müskens,

Olde Hartman,

Schers

et al. 2024

BMC Prim. Care

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Background Several studies showed that during the pandemic patients have refrained from visiting their general practitioner (GP). This resulted in medical care being delayed, postponed or completely forgone. The provision of low-value care, i.e. care which offers no net benefit for the patient, also could have been affected. We therefore assessed the impact of the COVID-19 restrictions on three types of low-value GP care: 1) imaging for back or knee problems, 2) antibiotics for otitis media acuta (OMA), and 3) repeated opioid prescriptions, without a prior GP visit. Methods We performed a retrospective cohort study using registration data from GPs part of an academic GP network over the period 2017–2022. The COVID-19 period was defined as the period between April 2020 to December 2021. The periods before (January 2017 to April 2020) and after the COVID-19 period (January 2022 to December 2022) are the pre- and post-restrictions periods. The three clinical practices examined were selected by two practicing GPs from a top 30 of recommendations originating from the Dutch GP guidelines, based on their perceived prevalence and relevance in practice (van Dulmen et al., BMC Primary Care 23:141, 2022). Multilevel Poisson regression models were built to examine changes in the incidence rates (IR) of both registered episodes and episodes receiving low-value treatment. Results During the COVID-19 restrictions period, the IRs of episodes of all three types of GP care decreased significantly. The IR of episodes of back or knee pain decreased by 12%, OMA episodes by 54% and opioid prescription rate by 13%. Only the IR of OMA episodes remained significantly lower (22%) during the post-restrictions period. The provision of low-value care also changed. The IR of imaging for back or knee pain and low-value prescription of antibiotics for OMA both decreased significantly during the COVID-restrictions period (by 21% and 78%), but only the low-value prescription rate of antibiotics for OMA remained significantly lower (by 63%) during the post-restrictions period. The IR of inappropriately repeated opioid prescriptions remained unchanged over all three periods. Conclusions This study shows that both the rate of episodes as well as the rate at which low-value care was provided have generally been affected by the COVID-19 restrictions. Furthermore, it shows that the magnitude of the impact of the restrictions varies depending on the type of low-value care. This indicates that deimplementation of low-value care requires tailored (multiple) interventions and may not be achieved through a single disruption or intervention alone.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 92%

Trends in low-value GP care during the COVID-19 pandemic: a retrospective cohort study

Müskens,

Olde Hartman,

Schers

et al. 2024

BMC Prim. Care

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

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“…This study has implications for future research. Some studies have shown that the measures taken in response to coronavirus disease of 2019, including an emphasis on personal hygiene and social distancing, may have had a positive impact on the occurrence of otitis media ( Choi et al 2022 ). However, necessary vaccinations may be delayed because of social distancing, which may increase the risk of vaccine-preventable otitis media.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Global, Regional, and National Burdens of Otitis Media From 1990 to 2019: A Population Based Study

Jin,

Yang,

Sun

et al. 2024

Ear &Amp; Hearing

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Objectives: Otitis media is one of the most important causes of hearing loss at an early age. Effective vaccination with the routine 7-valent pneumococcal conjugate vaccine (PCV-7) was introduced in 2000. It has been gradually replaced by the pneumococcal nontypeable Haemophilus influenzae protein D conjugate vaccine or the higher-valent 13-valent PCV (PCV-13) since 2010. Data on the change in otitis media burden in recent years are sparse at the global, regional, and national levels. Design: The Global Burden of Disease 2019 study was used to evaluate the prevalence, incidence, mortality, disability-adjusted life year (DALY) rates, and the average annual percentage changes (AAPCs) in otitis media in geographic populations worldwide from 1990 to 2019. These global trends were further analyzed by subgroup (age, sex, and sociodemographic index [SDI]). Results: Globally, the all-age rate of prevalence (AAPC = −0.7, 95% confidence interval [CI] = −0.7 to −0.8), DALYs (AAPC = −1.0, 95% CI = −1.1 to −1.0), and mortality (AAPC = −6.8, 95% CI = −7.3 to −6.4) from otitis media decreased constantly between 1990 and 2019. The all-age rate of incidence decreased sharply between 2000 and 2009 with an AAPC of −1.2 (95% CI = −1.4 to −0.9) and continued the downward trend between 2010 and 2019 (AAPC = −0.2, 95% CI = −0.3 to −0.1). In 2019, children aged 1 to 4 years old had the highest incidence at 29,127.3 per 100,000 population, while young adults under 30 years old accounted for 91.3% of the incident cases. Individuals living in middle-SDI countries had the largest increase in the incidence of otitis media, with an AAPC of 0.3 (95% CI = 0.3 to 0.3) between 1990 and 2019. The incidence and DALYs from otitis media decreased with increasing SDI. Regionally, the largest increase in incidence was observed in high-income Asia Pacific, Eastern Europe, and Western Sub-Saharan Africa between 1990 and 2019. Nationally, the largest increase in the incidence of otitis media was observed in the Republic of Korea, with an AAPC of 0.8 (95% CI = 0.6 to 1.1) in the same time period. Conclusions: There have been successful previous endeavors to reduce DALYs and mortality attributed to otitis media on a global scale. The worldwide incidence of otitis media experienced a sharp decline following the introduction of PCV-7 in 2000, and this downward trend persisted in subsequent years with the adoption of PCV-13/pneumococcal nontypeable Haemophilus influenzae protein D conjugate vaccine. Continual epidemiological surveillance of otitis media’s global trends, pathogen distribution, and resistance patterns remains imperative.

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“…Such challenges can lead to delays in proper treatment, and potentially result in errors or overmedication. Moreover, the COVID-19 patients were found to have relationship with Otitis media ( Choi et al, 2022 ), they demand to be diagnosed earlier than before, as otitis media always intend to recurrence and even cause Sensorineural-hearing-loss ( Xia et al, 2022 ). As a result, achieving rapid differential diagnosis for otitis media is crucial to ensure optimal patient outcomes, in this situation, an efficient diagnosis can be given using our transfer learning model.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

An automatic diagnosis model of otitis media with high accuracy rate using transfer learning

Qi,

You,

Guo

et al. 2024

Front. Mol. Biosci.

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Introduction: Chronic Suppurative Otitis Media (CSOM) and Middle Ear Cholesteatoma are two common chronic otitis media diseases that often cause confusion among physicians due to their similar location and shape in clinical CT images of the internal auditory canal. In this study, we utilized the transfer learning method combined with CT scans of the internal auditory canal to achieve accurate lesion segmentation and automatic diagnosis for patients with CSOM and middle ear cholesteatoma.Methods: We collected 1019 CT scan images and utilized the nnUnet skeleton model along with coarse grained focal segmentation labeling to pre-train on the above CT images for focal segmentation. We then fine-tuned the pre-training model for the downstream three-classification diagnosis task.Results: Our proposed algorithm model achieved a classification accuracy of 92.33% for CSOM and middle ear cholesteatoma, which is approximately 5% higher than the benchmark model. Moreover, our upstream segmentation task training resulted in a mean Intersection of Union (mIoU) of 0.569.Discussion: Our results demonstrate that using coarse-grained contour boundary labeling can significantly enhance the accuracy of downstream classification tasks. The combination of deep learning and automatic diagnosis of CSOM and internal auditory canal CT images of middle ear cholesteatoma exhibits high sensitivity and specificity.

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The Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Otitis Media

Cited by 16 publications

References 36 publications

Trends in low-value GP care during the COVID-19 pandemic: a retrospective cohort study

Trends in low-value GP care during the COVID-19 pandemic: a retrospective cohort study

Global, Regional, and National Burdens of Otitis Media From 1990 to 2019: A Population Based Study

An automatic diagnosis model of otitis media with high accuracy rate using transfer learning

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