Tympanic Membrane Changes in School-Aged Children

A comprehensive otolaryngologic examination, including otomicroscopy, was performed for 687 school children for morphologically to study the distribution of normal and abnormal tympanic membrane findings and the association of different factors with the abnormal TM finding in 6 to 15-year-old children. Two-thirds of the children had completely healthy tympanic membranes without any visible pathological change. The findings were more often normal the older the child. In the total population, individual tympanic membrane findings were normal as follows: color 90.7%, position 93.8%, mobility 93.7%, structure 91.8% and position of pars flaccida 88.5%. Contrary to normal findings, tympanic membrane abnormalities were not in general associated with each other. The study provides new information on the occurrence of tympanic membrane changes among school-aged children.