A Comparative Study of Various Office Procedures for the Management of Small to Medium Size Tympanic Membrane Perforations

A hospital based prospective study to compare and evaluate the efficacy and convenience of various office procedures like chemical cauterization, fat plug myringoplasty and butterfly cartilage tympanoplasty. This interventional, prospective, longitudinal study carried out on 300 patients in the ENT department of a tertiary care medical college hospital in central India between January 2009 and January 2015. The success rate was found to be 94.54, 91.12 and 97% in chemical cauterization, fat plug and butterfly cartilage tympanoplasty respectively (p value 0.246). In all the groups there were significant improvement in terms of hearing in decibels and AB gap postoperatively. No statistically significant association was found in between the failure rates in all the groups. From this study we conclude that all the procedures were simple, rapid, reliable, cost effective, takes less time and minimum hospital stay (day care) than conventional tympanoplasty. We strongly recommend these procedures in place of tympanoplasty in small to medium size central tympanic membrane perforations according to condition and convenience of the patients.