|
A study shows that grommets aren't needed to treat glue ear in children to prevent hearing loss. They do just as well without. Almost every child at some time will develop fluid in the middle ear, that's the section beyond the ear drum. If the fluid lingers it's called glue ear and one of the commonest childhood operations is to insert grommets - tubes through the eardrum to dry things out. The reason for grommets is the belief that hearing loss from glue ear damages children's intellectual development. Well according to the final part of a long and large study, that belief is no longer justified in healthy children. Following over 6000 children from early infancy to the age of 11 who had no known risk factors for developmental delay, researchers randomly assigned those with persisting fluid to early insertion of tubes or to delayed surgery 9 months later - or none if it had cleared up. The good news is that for the otherwise healthy child, waiting to see what happens to the fluid for up to a year - and possibly even longer does no harm to any aspect of the child's development including learning abilities. In fact the most likely thing is that the glue ear will get better by itself, so no operation at all is needed.
|
