gms | German Medical Science

Introduction: There are numbers of grafting materials have been used to reconstruct the tympanic membrane perforation.

Our aim was to evaluate the anatomical and audiological outcomes of tympanoplasty performed using tragal cartilage grafts of two different thicknesses (full thickness and partial thickness).

Methods & results: This study included 30 patients presenting with safe CSOM.

Patients were divided by a systemic random sampling method into two groups with 15 patients in each group.

The two groups were subjected to an underlay tympanoplasty (primary), using the tragal cartilage.

• Group A: patients received a full thickness cartilage graft.
• Group B: patients received a partial thickness cartilage graft.

Assessment of hearing included audiological follow-up by pure tone audiometry at three months post-operatively.

In Group A, the pre-operative average air-bone gap was 30.15 ± 5.42 dB, the post-operative average air-bone gap was 20.44 ± 5.34 dB and the average air-bone gap closure was 9.71±0.52 dB In Group B, the pre-operative average air-bone gap was 30.22 ± 6.49 dB, the post-operative average air-bone gap was 10.74 ± 4.29 dB and the average air-bone gap closure was 19.48 ± 5.93 dB.

We found no statistically difference in the rate of good graft take between two groups, as the rate of graft failure in both groups was (6.67%) and the rate of good graft take in both groups was (93.33%) during clinical follow-up for 6 months post-operatively.

Conclusions: We concluded that the partial thickness tragal cartilage graft is preferable to the full thickness one in type one tympanoplasty as it maintains a good balance between adequate stability and good hearing improvement level.

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