Abstract
Most of patients with patulous eustachian tube (PET) are diagnosed by the clinical history, symptoms and eardrum findings during respiration. In addition, the results of eustachian tube function tests are useful to diagnose PET. However, we often experienced the clinical findings showing clearly PET but the results of eustachian tube function tests showed negative. Thus we analyzed eustachian tube function tests including tubo-tympano-aerodynamic graphy (TTAG) and sonotubometry of the patients with PET diagnosed by the clinical history, symptoms and eardrum findings during respiration. Then, we also compared the results of tubal function tests using TTAG and sonotubometry in the patients with unilateral or bilateral PET, or PET with or without eardrum movement during respiration. The positive rate of TTAG and sonotubometry of the patients with PET was 53.1% and 84.4%, respectively. Thus the positive rate of sonotubometry of the patients with PET was significantly higher than TTAG. The positive rate of sonotubometry in the patients with unilateral PET or PET without eardrum movement during respiration was significantly higher than TTAG. Moreover, the tubal opening was obtained significantly more easily by sonotubometry than TTAG and the rate of tubal opening in response to Valsalva maneuver of the patients with unilateral PET was significantly lower than bilateral PET.
These results suggested that sonotubometry was more useful as a screening test for the diagnosis of the patients with unilateral PET or PET without eardrum movement during respiration, including the patients with PET who were not responding to Valsalva maneuver than TTAG, and that sonotubometry could be complementary to TTAG for the diagnosis of those patients with PET.
