Standardized questionnaires for the diagnostic of Eustachian tube dysfunction

Background. Eustachian tube (ET) dysfunction can cause middle ear diseases and impair quality of life. In particular the patulous ET might cause severe complaints like autophony, breath synchronized movement of the eardrum or impaired hearing. In case of unspecific complaints especially the diagnosis of a patulous ET can be challenging. Therefore, specific diagnostic tools for ET dysfunction are under research. The ETDQ-7 Questionnaire was established in 2012 by McCoul for chronic obstructive ET dysfunctions and the PHI-10 was published and validated by Kobayshi et al. in 2017 as an instrument to evaluate a patulous ET.

Patients and methods. We translated the PHI-10 questionnaire into German and validated it in 80 patients. The PHI-10 (german) was compared to ETDQ-7 in 20 healthy subjects, 20 patients with tinnitus, 20 patients with patulous ET und 20 patients with chronic obstructive ET dysfunction.

Results:

A German Version of the PHI-10 was generated. The results in the English questionnaire could be confirmed with the German version of the questionnaire. We show the results of the PHI-10 and ETDQ-7 for each group of patients. The ETDQ-7 might tend to be false positive in patients with patulous ET and both questionnaires in patients with tinnitus.

Conclusion:

The PHI-10 (German) can be recommended as an additional tool during preoperative patient examination of ET dysfunction. It may as well be valuable in follow-up examinations to monitor treatment success.

Publikationsverlauf

Publikationsdatum:
18. April 2018 (online)