Impact of ventilation tube insertion on long‐term language outcomes at 6 and 10 years of age: A prospective pregnancy cohort study

Objective Investigating the impact of early childhood ventilation tube insertion (VTI) on long‐term language outcomes. Design Longitudinal cohort study. Setting A total of 2900 pregnant women participated in the Raine Study between 1989 and 1991 in Western Australia, and 2868 children have been followed up. Participants Based on parental reports, 314 children had a history of recurrent otitis media but did not undergo VTI (rOM group); another 94 received VTI (VTI group); while 1735 had no history of rOM (reference group) in the first 3 years of childhood. Children with data on outcomes and confounders were included in analyses of PPVT‐R at ages 6 (n = 1567) and 10 years (n = 1313) and CELF‐III at 10 years (n = 1410) (approximately 5% in the VTI group and 15% in the rOM group). Main Outcome Measures Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test‐Revised edition and Clinical Evaluation of Language Fundamentals® Preschool‐3. Results At 6 years, mean PPVT‐R scores were significantly lower in the VTI group than the reference group (β = −3.3; 95% CI [−6.5 to −0.04], p = .047). At 10 years, while the difference between the VTI and reference groups was less pronounced for PPVT‐R scores, there was a small but consistent trend of lower measures, on average, across CELF‐III scores (expressive: β = −3.4 [−7.1 to 0.27], p = .069; receptive: β = −4.1 [−7.9 to −0.34], p = .033; total: β = −3.9 [−7.5 to −0.21], p = .038). There was no evidence to suggest that language outcomes in the rOM group differed from the reference group. Conclusion Lower scores of language outcomes in school‐aged children who received VTI in early childhood may suggest a long‐term risk which should be considered alongside the potential benefits of VTI.